The Legend Within
by shike77
Summary: If everything you believed to be a lie suddenly becomes the only truth you can cling to in a sea of overwhelming doubt and fear, you'd be pretty messed up, too. Chapter V up.
1. The Lives that You Let go

The Legend Within

_by shike77_

_Chapter I_

_"You bled along the edge of reason  
You could have changed your mind into the driest season  
Don't explain I know  
The lives that you let go  
the ones you thought you knew  
held onto deep dark truth."  
_

_- "The Last Scene of Struggling"  
Finger Eleven_

WELL-! Hiyo, Me again. ^_^ Yeah… I got sick of the older version. And It's all deletey now. *nods a little*

So-?! How the hell did I come up with this? *shrugs* I dunno, you tell me. I mean, HONESTLY—it's DECEMBER, my family is not even ARGUING because they're too busy sucking up for good presents—and, wow, I'm writing Angst. @_@;; Suprisingly, it's better when I'm happy. My gore is worse, though.

Anyhoo… Any Sci-fi fans out there will KNOW that anything with technology in it that ALSO has magic in it would be classified as fantasy. Any technology-based stuff without magic is Sci-fi. For warning—magic plays an amazingly important role in this fic. Technology is just as big. I will make up terms—and explain them three or four chapters down the road.

And—I'm trying a technique. I might not be able to pull it off, but I've recently read the Finonavar Tapestry, and Mr. Kay used this… STYLE I've never SEEN before that allowed him to make an entire book span the period of a week. And this was a decent-sized book, mind you. It allowed him to go back and go over what characters were thinking and their POV's—not just the person telling the story originally. And DAMN—you don't even notice it.

Nig: *holds up a sign labeled "I'm a consumer whore"*

… Shaddup, you. Anyway, buy that book and read it. There are three books in one—do that. AWESOME! *nods* I worship.

… So, what were we talking about?

RIGHT! My story. ^_^;; *coughs, shuffles papers a bit nervously* Righto. So…

What else to say…? This story (as so far I've got planned) in the sum of a few words: Gore, angst, FIRE, pointy things, technology, and outfits that are proof I've played WAY too much FFX-2—which was a blast. ^_^ WORSHIP!

… *observes the reader's blank stare* What? Your fault you started reading this.

RIGHT-! Su. This takes place on a futury Endiness, just like the previous TLW. UNlike the previous TLW, Leon and Saer's personalities have been altered drastically since the last time you saw them. 

Saer: That is the only blessing Soa has ever given me.

… Shaddup. I HAVE FEELINGS TOO, YOU KNOW!

Leon: Yeah. We just like to attack them drastically.

… Sadistic bastards.

And for those of you who are not very good at short hand things, I abbreviate the names of all my fics. Sin's Torment becomes ST, and this one becomes TLW. The most I'll have is three letters. ^_^

… Enough of that, I swear…  


Oh—And yeah, still doing the song-quotey things. ^_^ Nyar. Like those. I'll place the entire verse (or half of it if it's long) and bold the part that is the title. Happy? ^_^   


And… If I don't get at least six pages on Microsoft Word, (Verdana size eight or ten) shoot me. ^_^ Thank you.

And… On with dos fic?

* * *

It seemed odd that they were still following her.

She leaned forward on the hoverbike, smirking at the readings she was getting on her visor. The pale red text danced in front of her eyes as she scanned it eagerly for what she wanted to know.

She growled suddenly, glaring at the bland red print in front of her eyes.

"Only six? This sucks ass."

She leaned down towards the controls, glaring at them as she punched the combination of buttons she'd memorized earlier that week—constantly changing on her, the damned things.

"Owl, this is Falcon, you read?"

The com crackled a bit before the reception cleared up.

"You're driving too fast again, Falcon."

She rolled her eyes, watching the red on her visor try to decipher the type and model of her pursuers.

"Very funny. You take controls for a bit, I've got six UDR's on my tail."

There was a pause, and she was about to remind him how precious time was when the com sprung to life again.

"UDR's? Damn, S-"

"Code names, asshole."

He coughed lightly before continuing. "Falcon, I've got analyze them or you're in trouble. I can't take control of the bike yet."

She snarled at him, dodging a skyscraper. "I've handled plenty of UDR's before you came along, I think I can handle them."

"Wolf won't let you go solo, not after what happened last time. We're pulling enough strings right about now with you even _out_ there."

"Who cares what that puppy thinks?!" she growled, glaring past the madly scrolling text that clouded her view. "Sparrow?"

There was a cheer, then an obvious scramble of chairs and paperwork—the dreaded.

"Right here, Fal."

She sighed. "If I regret this, then you're mincemeat. Got it?"

The smile on his face was obvious over the voice-only communicator as the command overrides began preventing her hands from steering or accelerating.

"But I'll still be one happy mincemeat."

Falcon smiled—more than happy he couldn't see it—and stood on the seat of the bike. Balancing with ease, she pressed a few buttons on the device sewn in between the layers of her right glove and felt the metal on her belt re-form into the desired shape.

Owl's knowledgeable, warm voice spoke caution over the com.

"I hate to remind you again, but don't use the handguns. The technology's ancient, and I haven't figured out whether or not if works with your belt, there."

The tips of her lip turned up into the ever-present smirk. She grabbed the guns from their holsters, loading the weapons and listening to the sonar device carefully, waiting for her que.

It came as the sonar bounced back to her in the shape of a… paw? Metal, by the sound of it…

She spun and pulled the trigger on both weapons rapidly, several advanced bullets ripping through metal as if it were a thin sheet of silk. A substance began pouring out of the UDR, although the sonar was of no help in identifying it. Never faltering, she focused on the next target. Apparently of the same making.

"Try not to ruin them all!" Owl warned her—why he even bothered anymore was a mystery—as she pounded titanium into its thin metal 'skull.' The bike beneath her swerved to dodge a horizontal pole, causing Falcon to nearly lose her balance.

"Careful, Sparrow!" she snapped, glaring past the haywire readings (useless), trying to regain her sonar—lost it in the stumble.

When she gained it again, one of them was about to bite her head off.

She swore, emptying the rest of both clips into the UDR. As it crashed into the machine directly behind it, throwing that one into the building Falcon had just flown by, she yelled at her com, "Owl, get more ammo in these things next time!"

His reply came as she watched—or listened to—the machine crumble against the laser-enforced artificial steel that was the building's makeup. "Falcon, it's impossible. Your belt won't be able to carry that much metal without being detected."

"_You're_ impossible," she grumbled at him, grabbing what looked like a metal cylinder from her belt with her left hand. She gripped it fiercely and, with a whir of tiny gears and the sound of metal grating against metal, a blade engraved with the pattern of dancing flames sprouted forth, closely followed by the crossbar. The hilt thinned out to fit the proper grip for a sword and she spun it, testing the weight she already knew would be flawless.

She didn't hear the retort. What she did hear was the returning sound wave reflecting off of the metallic making of those damned machines straight overhead.

She swung the blade in a high ark, slicing through what could only be the underbelly of that tin can as if it were air. The substance the machines leaked suddenly soaked her, and even the helmet couldn't protect her from her above-average sense of scent.

_Blood?! What the hell, they're machines!_

She had not the time to ponder further, what with the last—_thing_ hovering overhead. Seeing as sonar gave off annoying echoes, she pressed the button that turned off her sonar and another that raised that infernal visor.

What couldn't have been anything but hot, sticky saliva was welling in the large, gaping mouth full of diamond-cut teeth—recycled, she noticed, because of the way it caught the light—and couldn't help but let her mouth drop a little at the thick muscles and tendons that lined the inside. What she had thought to be plain old metal was intertwined with rough, course skin overlaid by a series of intertwining wires coated in some sort of metallic substance. The metal must have reflected the sound waves first, and she most likely disregarded the skin for one of those blasted echoes.

How she hated herself sometimes.

The monster—which looked oddly like one of those dogs she'd seen in books—dove for her, and she couldn't help but notice that in the single natural eye remaining, there was the presence of pain that the seven robotic ones didn't contain.

Of course not. Robots weren't programmed to have feelings.

She swung the blade, neatly beheading the monster—again, being sprayed with the blood that smelled just the slightest bit of robotic fluids. She caught the head and body as they fell and seated herself on her bike.

"Sonar on."

For once, the voice command worked and she heard the return of the images around her. None left.

"Visor down." Without even waiting for a reply, she turned to the com. "We've got an issue."

"Well, yeah, you're half an hour late for your haircut appointment and Peacock's on the fritz about it."

She rolled her eyes. "Stop it, Sparrow."

At the tone in her voice, he silenced immediately.

"Give me my damned controls back so I can get to the rendezvous point."

There was a sudden stall in the fast pace Sparrow had chosen and she ordered the bike to hold onto the body and head for her. The machine was apparently obliged to comply without complaint—the only thing she ever liked about the damn things—and she gladly took back the controls.

"Owl, you're not going to sleep for the next few months."

She knew that was an understatement.

***

"I hate irony," Leon mused as he stared out of the window at the planet he'd been born on, staring at the miserable grey clouds that covered the entire surface of the damned place—ground up after that nuclear blast.

"Hm?"

He glanced over at Onica, who had raised her eyes from the Rosary she clutched to her chest. Dark blue eyes looked him over, watching as he gained a tighter grip on the bar he was holding and swung himself closer to the window.

"My parents were Jewish."

He smiled for her—although it was lop-sided and half-hearted—and she merely nodded solemnly in reply.

"Medieval Christians chased the pagans out of their homes," she replied simply, "and moved their holidays to Pagan dates to take away their celebrating." She ran her thumb along the image of the woman—Leon never knew her real importance.

"… We're taught, in Church, to welcome the end of the world and to pray for it so that we may join Jesus and God in heaven."

He didn't smile at that. He watched her blink furiously, then bury her face in her knees and try to fight off the tears.

"How long does everyone else have?"

Leon turned away, looking coldly out the window at the dying planet they were orbiting. Their home.

"I give them a month."

She nodded with a sniff, her hair moving slowly in weightlessness even though it was cropped—however unevenly—to be level with her chin. It seemed that no one wanted to waste power by giving the cargo hold gravity, and neither stowaways had expected them to.

"I hate it. Why the hell should we have to put up with a few people's mistakes!?"

Leon closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't know."

"The people down there aren't the ones who built that bomb!" She waved in the direction of Earth, head still on her knees. "The people on this fucking ship did! And they're the ones getting away with it!"

He turned away from her again, staring out at the Earth.

"… You know, my brother still had a chance to be normal. Social Services found out about Celeste's drug addictions, and Luke's alcohol problems. They were going to get us a new home."

He rested his head on the window, closing his eyes.

"That was the day the bomb hit."

After a few minutes, Onica sighed.

"… I was at Church. The Armageddon Mass."

He looked over at her, watching as she wiped a tear away from her face. He turned back to the window again, having no comfort to offer. He understood little about the Christian faith—or any religion for that matter, being Atheist.

"… Everyone just…"

"… Reduced to dust."

She looked over at him watching his green eyes stare at the black planet that had once been his home. Once been the water planet. Now…

First the Dinosaurs and whatever killed them. Well… who knew what the Big Bang wiped out? Perhaps there was an eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth that had been going on forever. Perhaps there was no _real_ dawn of time. What if everything had always started with the destruction of something else?

The two of them sat for a long time in silence, only Leon noticing when the ship started to move away from Earth—although the green-eyed teenager never had the heart to tell his friend, so Onica never knew for sure exactly when the ship started moving. He didn't want her to look out the window at the planet anyone would have mistaken for Venus.

He wondered if Venus had life on it, once, and they just made the same stupid mistakes.

His thoughts continued along those lines for what seemed like an eternity. They both would have lost track of time had it not been for their digital watches, the time and day staring at them rather blankly. Once Onica—half-starved and in a crying fit she was known for—tried to phone her foster parents on her cellphone, only to get a message that informed them rather blandly that the user was currently out of the service area, and that she had to return to the Calgary area in order to make use of the mobile device.

That particular revelation caused them both to laugh a bit, and Leon decided to scrounge through the luggage around them, as if to find something they could eat. Most of what he found were priceless gems and expensive dresses, but the contents of one particular package was a rather large bundle of beef jerky and Belgian chocolates.

When he returned his gaze to Onica's, she was regarding a watch embedded with opals rather coldly. For a moment, Leon wondered why, but he shook that off and offered her some of the food.

She scarfed that down. It had been days since they'd eaten—not to mention only a few hours on the ship and already the lack of gravity was beginning to get to their heads. Onica was spewing random phrases, the only real movement the gentle up and down that made her look suspended in water. Of curse, Onica had never really been… 'all there.'

She nearly attacked Leon when he prevented her from eating more than he gave her out of their little stock of food. While he was fighting off the constant need to grab the handle to the door and fling it open—even though the only one they had a chance of opening led to space—Leon managed to pursuade her to calm down. He sung her a song she had taught him—a lullaby she claimed her birthmother had always used to keep her from crying—and she slowly fell asleep.

After that, the food supply hidden in case she wake before he did, Leon fell into a fitful dose. Twice Onica's screaming woke him up—after the second time, he stuffed a sock in her mouth.

"In space, no one can hear you scream," he grumbled hoarsely, shivering from the cold. "Nobody but me, that is."

He sounded like a rapist that belonged in a mental hospital. And that scared him. 

He wondered if he was going crazy as well—several times. Whenever he woke, he was crying and sweating, sticky spit filling his mouth in spite of the fact that he'd had nothing to drink for days. Nothing.

He was almost afraid to wake Onica up, even when he decided it was time for more food. She'd had a history of sleepwalking, and she was murmuring and thrashing about wildly, as if trying to walk but being held back by some invisible force.

The last time he could remember having his thoughts somewhat clear was the sight of what looked like two planets, side by side, their sizes relatively the same. Pluto and its moon. The also remembered the time on his watch being exactly six hours different from the time the ship had started to move away from Earth.

With human technology, it had taken years just to get to Mars.

When asked later, he replied that he couldn't remember a thing past that. He assumed it was the speed they were moving at and the lack of gravity that drove them both into madness—Onica first because of her frequent bouts of depression and whatever other mental issues she was always struggling with back on Earth.

The next thing he knew, he woke up in a strange room with a blonde girl that looked so much like Onica standing over him.

* * *

… *cough* and this would be where I answer to all my reviews.

BUT-! Anyone wanna be in a Christmas Humour fic I'm working on? I know Fifi and Steel wanna be in already… I'm assuming Striker, too.

I wanna get it started soon, so it's done before the day. ^_^


	2. Supply Met Demand

The Legend Within   
by shike77 

_Chapter II_

_"But you can't stop the plan 'cause _**supply met demand**_"_

_- "The Last Scene of Struggling"__  
Finger Eleven_

… Okies. Because of that new FFNet rule about Author-Note type stuff, I'm sticking that on the first chapter. *nods* Some of you's didn't get the chance to read it, so… that would be smart. ^_^;;  


Also note that I already used that song last chapter. -_-;; I hate meself sometimes. Meh—you'll live. I'm keeping it because it FITS, damn you. *runs off to check her other CD's regardless*  


Christmas spoils?

^_______^ *sing-song* I'm going to Nickelback, I'm going to Nickelback! ^______^ I love my parents. They were selling the tickets to the show with hockey stuff—yet another ruse to make money for the Flames, methinks. Hey, it worked.

*dances* I got FFX-2. ^_^ I don't care if Square was profit-mongering or not, I like it.

A new stereo! ^___^ With REPEAT! And a RECORD FUNCTION! You don't realize how crappy my old one was.

… Alright. ST update coming… next? ^_^ I swear, I'm working on this one way too much, now that I've re-started it. *nods*

Su. In this chapter, we meet the Air Faction, wolf-dude, and also one of our main bad guys. Who still doesn't have a name. I hate this immensely.

Saer: Just call him Bob and get over with it.

^_^ That's a plan.

And a side-note? Humour fic failed miserably. *nods* Sorry 'bout that.

* * *

In the passenger cabin of the same ship that Onica and Leon stole away in, the trip was turning out to be rather uneventful—none of the former political leaders really regretted the lives lost. They had their own planet to worry about.

"Remind me again," the man grunted in what seemed now an unfamiliar language to them all, their native tongue or not, "why we destroyed an entire planet after we nearly controlled all of the single most powerful country in its borders? Those weapons could have been useful to us, you know."

His companion sent the man a glance, sipping the smooth coffee that was the last of his meager stock he'd brought in his carry-on—the rich drink only thing worth complimenting that ugly rock for—and gently placed it in the cup-holder, closing his eyes to fight off an impending headache. Damned space travel. He didn't care for it much—even shields that supposedly protected the passengers from becoming completely insane only worked about seventy percent of the time, and therefore were highly unreliable.

"Because," he replied, using the same lie they'd all been fed, "There are resources under the planet's surface that require the technology we have to mine and process, and those primitive animals would most likely get in the way. You've seen how they treat their naturalists. If I had my way, I'd get rid of Seles once and for all. That wood could do us some good."

The other man snorted. "You can only recycle oxygen so many times before it starts to become hazardous to a person's health. We need a source of the stuff so we can get rid of Carbon Dioxide while we're at it, too."

"I know." He took a tentative sip of the dark liquid, glaring out the window at the small planet and its moon—Pluto and Charon? He could never remember. Not that it mattered. Not anymore.

"Three days to go," he sighed, settling down, glaring at the movie that was to be playing during the flight. Some comedy or other that wasn't really funny, he thought sadly.

"Channel selection," he grumbled, placing the black glasses in front of his face. Soft green text scrolled in front of his eyes, giving him the option of music from every planet containing sentient beings discovered as of yet. He noted with a tinge of regret that there were a few new additions to the list—including that damnable planet on which he'd spent what seemed like a eternity dealing with idiots. He wasn't surprised to see that there were several different classifications to the music from that one planet… the infernal noise came in all colours available. He chose one from a planet called Lindehr, which had a soft style with a gentle beat that calmed him. Not to mention helped him to ignore his headaches. He closed his eyes and smiled, leaning back in his seat and attempted to fall asleep.

Suddenly, his companion spoke up again, "I think it has something to do with all those kids they took. I noticed a couple sneaking into the Cargo Bay, but the ones they brought in the actual ship were all pretty young."

Coffee-man rolled his eyes. "I don't care what they do, as long as we profit from it and the Press doesn't hear about it."

"… Not in my backyard, is it?"

He frowned, turning to face the man beside him. "What?"

"Not in my backyard. It's what the people in Earth called people who wanted to get rid of problems, like crime or garbage, but not live near a prison or a dump."

He snorted, turning away. "I never thought an entire planet of idiots was possible."

"… Idiots, yes, but I think I'll miss the place."

"More than the pay you're getting now?"

He chuckled at that, a smile on his face as he shook his head. "No. I'm going to retire on a nice planet somewhere, now. Away from pollution."

***

In the cockpit of the same ship, the emergency pilot shook her head, toying with a braid that fell over her shoulder, the pale orange colour accented with streaks of white.

"Maybe it's about time we got that kid out of the cargo bay. It's not safe in there, and I was told she's got mental problems already."

"PROCESSING SUGGESTION…"

She sighed at the pilot's bland, blank statement. Robots were _not_ good conversationalists, no matter how much artificial intelligence was pounded into their chips.

"… Ignore that," she grumbled at it, leaning back in the plain, solitary chair that adorned the room.

"… UNABLE TO COMPLY. PASSENGER IN CARGO BAY MUST REMAIN IN CARGO BAY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE."

She sighed at it, rolling her eyes up towards the ceiling. "Robots," she grumbled, "Why don't you just keel over and die?"

"UNABLE TO COMPLY."

This looked to be a long, long trip.

***

"Well, fuck," Jheil Reighn shook his head, tossing a torn apart limb onto the pile that was left of the body brought back from the last mission. "Command'll be on my head about this."

"What, you didn't give 'em any beer last night?"

The tall, slim twenty-year old sent a glare his friend's way, watching as Githen Iurnai grinned up at him past a bowl of hot soup… beef, by the smell of it, with some vegetables floating in it. Only then did he realize how hungry he really was.

"Eat up, you. You haven't had a break since she brought these back yesterday."

The older man sighed, moving to wash his hands in a sink nearby. The cold, clean water numbed his hands as always, especially after working for hours being covered in a warm, sticky mixture of blood and machine oil. He ran them under the dryer to warm them, perhaps letting them linger there longer than the necessary few seconds.

Another glance at the hot soup caused him to move towards Githen, slowly taking it away from him with a small thanks.

"You did a good job with the bike yesterday," he mumbled past a hot spoonful after a few minutes, then continued to chew his beef.

The kid started a bit, then grinned, scratching the back of his head. "Naw, it was nothin'."

Jheil smiled at his raven-haired friend, whose golden eyes had turned towards the doorway. He waved, suddenly, and the man looked up to see their blonde companion walk into the room.

"What do you have?" she asked plainly with a small nod of greeting, glancing from the soup to the over-worked scientist. The dark, haunting blue rimmed with bright red in each iris still made him a little uncomfortable when she tried to maintain eye contact—as she was doing at that precise moment. The colour contrast was impossible to stand for long.

He looked back to the table and shook his head. "Nothing. Sorry, Saer, but I've worked all night, and not a thing to speak for it. Whatever this… _thing_ was before they filled its body with wires, it was definitely smuggled from another planet. It looks like one of our wolves or perhaps a dog, but its lungs aren't filled with enough pollution to be naturally from Endiness. It hasn't even _adapted_ to the amount of foreign materials in the air like everything else has-"

Saer Zeyl watched him a moment, then tried to smile, if only to make him _stop talking_, and shook her head.

"… Don't worry about it. It's not a problem. You take a break—We've got another mission in a few days."

Githen groaned all too dramatically.

"What?! I was planning on going into Bale and hitting a few bars on my break… I mean, we hit a real big problem that could completely screw over the entire government _and_ reveal that company! We deserve credit for that, man!"

Saer held up a gloved hand—Jheil noticed that her chips had been cut out of them, most likely for software updates. Their friend shut up rather abruptly, but was none too happy about it.

"You know that ship that launched in secret a few days ago? Well, it's going to land before the end of this week." She turned to the tall man, who brushed mouse-brown hair out of his eyes to examine her better. He tried not to look down at her, but his large, beak-like nose always made trouble of that.

She smiled a bit, as if his uncomfort of looking down at her five foot six inches figure from his six foot ten being uncomfortable was amusing, then moved away, picking up the pen-like mechanism on her way over to the blank, black screen sitting in the corner of the room.

"… As far as I know, the ship should land in the base on Kashua plains—near Flanvel Ruins, remember?" she pressed a button below the screen as she spoke, watching the white text appear with only half a mind. She touched the screen a few times, waiting only for the text and images to shift and create new options for her, until a diagram of the chosen base was displayed on the screen. She lifted the pen, circling two of the three landing bays and crossing them out. The marks appeared on the screen as she touched the pen to it, bright red against the white and black.

"Landing bay C and A are still broken, thanks to Space Squad's failed mission last month, leaving only B left for them to land successfully." She then looked to the four entrances.

"Gate One, coincidentally, is on the only road to the base, and at the approximate time of the landing, a shipment will be arriving there. This gate contains the most sensors of the three functioning, and is therefore further out of the question.

"However, Gate Four-" and she circled the smallest gate, closest to the ruins, "-is down for maintenance. If we time it right, I might be able to slip through during the evening break period."

"They have their guys working around the clock?" Jheil asked suspiciously, thick eyebrows moving down in a frown.

Saer nodded. "Looks like it."

Githen shook his head. "Why land there if they know we've tried to foil their plans there before?"

The blonde looked to him with a sigh. "Because they captured Space's mercenary in the mission, remember?"

He winced, visibly. "… Oh. I remember that… But he came back two weeks ago!"

She made a face, tugging on a few strands of red that intermingled with the blonde. "You didn't see how bad off he was."

There came a sigh from Jheil, who shook his head sadly. "With good reason, too. He took a pill that messed up his vocal chords beyond prepare so he couldn't say a thing, and now he's only got one leg. He's still hospitalized for it, too, and in a coma."

Githen turned to Saer, then, frowning. "And you're taking this on?! Sa, I knew you're suicidal and all, but isn't that a bit-?"

She silenced him with a glare, then turned back to the screen.

"… Once we manage to get inside the building, I'll throw a couple of sleep gas canisters to knock out anyone. The building is small, with only a few people working there at a time, so this won't be a problem. I'll pump some sleeping gas into the ship as well, and send out a pulse that should disable any of the machinery before the robots become a problem." She turned to look at them. "Any questions?"

"One," came a gruff voice, and to any untrained ear it would have sounded like a growl.

All three turned to view the mass of fur and muscle stalk into the room, human-like hands with small claws instead of fingernails twitching at the mention of battle.

"How am I getting in?"

Saer immediately shook her head. "You're not, that's how."

Eyes that were all-too human narrowed, and he pulled back the lips on his long, lupine snout, showing that sharp, white teeth beneath.

"I am," he growled again, moving towards the blonde at the screen.

After a few moments of an intense staring contest, Saer spoke to her partners, unmoving.

"We need to talk. Boys, out."

They knew that tone. Jheil was quick to move—almost too fast for his taloned feet. He swore as he slipped on the metal surface, nearly falling out the door. It slid shut with a hiss of hydraulics, and Saer immediately moved back towards the screen, surveying it again.

"You're not going alone," he managed gruffly, his voice heavily distorted past wolf features. "Not after two months ago."

"Cehkan," she sighed, pacing the length of the screen, "You have to let it go. It's not your fault he screwed up."

"I sent a rookie on a mission."

"None of us knew there was something else going on."

He snarled, getting on all fours and moving to her side, muscles rippling beneath the thick fur. He suddenly started pacing, and Saer noticed he'd changed his hands to paws again. Anyone else would have reprimanded him for messing with his body structure again—he wasn't supposed to be able to shape-shift at all—but she understood. It was more natural that way, he'd told her. He didn't have to focus on standing up.

"That's not the point. I sent a Soa-damned _rookie_ on a mission. A wanna-be. And look where that got him."

Saer strode over to him with an uncanny sense of balance about her that he'd often told her he envied, shaking her head. "Kan, he wanted to help. He paid the price. We all do."

He snarled again, the wolf-sound ringing in the small room. Saer stood her ground, her infamous cold composure steady as ever. Growling low in his throat, Cehkan Largyh sat on the floor, his head bowed, ears flat against his skull.

Saer watched him a moment, watching the pearl-like sphere on a heavy silver chain around his thick neck hum softly in response to her presence, then sighed and shook her head.

"… Alright. You can come. But no heroics this time."

He looked up at her, the best smirk he could manage plastered on his face. "We have three days to figure out how I'm getting in there."

She felt like telling him he was wagging his tail again, but decided better of it.

"Getting _to _the place, you mean. I'm not going to risk breaking my bike carrying you again."

He nodded, stalking towards the machine on the table with what seemed an extra bounce in his step. "If you can carry these, you can carry me."

She shook her head. "They weigh less than you."

"That's not hard."

She glared at him, running a hand through her hair and scratching the back of her head. It was true, she admitted to herself. Even as incredibly slouched as he was whenever standing on two feet, he was at least eight and a half feet tall. Whenever he managed to stand up straight, he was bordering on nine. He was an enormous creature, a mass of muscle, fur and bone, but still managed to be sleek, however ruffled his grey fur usually became or how bizarre he appeared standing on two legs.

He was everyone's constant reminder of exactly what they were up against.

"… Jheil's working on a teleporter. I'm sure it's still in Beta, but we could give it a few tests."

He rolled his eyes. "I've had my fair share of being a Guinea Pig in my life, thanks."

It was a cruel joke.

"I didn't mean with _you_," she mumbled, somewhat apologetic, moving smoothly over to the screen again. This time, she pressed a button that pulled up a map of Endiness. Their position in Seles Global Park was highlighted by a small red dot. Saer pressed a few more buttons, and the base in Kashua Plains became highlighted in blue.

"… That's a long way," she replied, frowning. "We can't exactly take you on a train."

"I could pass off as a dog?"

She snorted. "Fat chance. Even on all fours you're the biggest damn mutt I've ever seen."

He sent her a withering glare, starting to pace again, tail forced into a quivering still. _He's thinking again,_ she thought darkly, _dangerous thoughts._

She stood still, waiting for him to think out whatever he was working through in his head. His pacing slowed, then suddenly sped up. It was almost like his thoughts were running him instead of them running through his head.

Used to this behavior, she merely sat back and waited, not about to interrupt him.

_What do you guys think? You've both been awfully quiet._

The image of a Dragon flashed before her eyes, curled up tail-to-nose. The discussion had made her tired - she didn't understand. Even the smallest bit of strategy was enough to make her want to snooze.

**_… I've never been big on 'technology,' even in my time, but it seems alright. _**

Saer smiled at that, shaking her head. _Not the actual plan. The mission._

The Dragon's image in Saer's mind lifted her head, eye ridges furrowed and her eyes narrowed. Mission? She didn't care if a group of teddy bears were taking over the world, she wanted to fight and she wanted to do it _now_.

_… I know exactly what _you_ think about it,_ she grumbled mentally, watching her wolf-like friend pause momentarily in his pacing.

**_Githen's right,_** the other voice began, slowly,**_ I think that the ship landing in that particular spot is suspicious. Isn't it close to that lab hidden under the ruins?_**

****Saer frowned. She hadn't thought of that. She pressed another button and the underground base was highlighted in green - covering nearly half of Mille Seasau.

_… That's not a good thing,_ she thought, touching the laboratory and having it appear on the screen with the landing pads on top of it. _How could I have forgotten?_

The Dragon's picture showed again, and the creature was hiding her eyes and ear-holes as best she could. Not _more_ strategy…

_Quiet._

"Cekhan…"

"What?" His voice was almost accusing—she'd broken his chain of thought, after all.

"Do you know exactly where that ship's coming from?"

"… The name starts with an 'E,' I think. Our hackers are still working on the code so it's hard to tell."

"Is Githen working on it?"

"… No." He frowned, the expression looking unintentionally comical on the wolf face. "I've still got him working on that code we got back from Earth's mission last month… Any reason you want him on this?"

"Tell him I'll give him all the free time he wants to go to town if he cracks this code by tomorrow." She spun on her heel to face him, the red in her eyes blazing. "That ship has got to be either a trap or a Lab Rat cage."

The Dragon frowned. What was so bad about rats? They tasted good, really. Sure, there was the whole squirming thing if you swallowed them whole, but all in all they made a good snack.

**_She doesn't mean rodents,_** the other voice replied before Saer could retort. **_She means kids._**

* * *

… ^_^ OOOH! The Attempted suspense. ^_^

Saer: … You really suck at this.

Yup. On to the reviews!

Fifi - @_@;; Somebody's excited. And had too much sugar. Mountain Dew. Or something.

Striker - Pretty much. There's a long, complicated story behind it, but all will be revealed in time. ^_^

Shade - … Sanity? ^_^ Lost it~! Can't find it anywhere! *nods* Not like I miss it or anything. I couldn't have fun with it around.

DemonGod - ^_^;; Yeah, it's a bit off. *nods*


	3. If You Touch Me

The Legend Within   
_by shike77_   
**Chapter III**   
_"_**If you touch me**_,_   
_you'll understand what happiness is…"_   
_- 'Memory,' Cats, the musical. Andrew Lloyd and Webber._

Hee. ^_^ *points and laughs at herself* I is procrastinating again. The kitchen needs to be cleaned, homework needs to get done… *dances* But I FINISHED it. *nods* And the next chapter SHOULD come easier, considering I actually KNOW what the hell is HAPPENING. 

…

… *knocks on wood* ^_^;;

So, what to say? Foul language, the closest you can get to little-kid angst, and… @_@;; Funkyness. I think Saer's PMSing during this chapter, though…

Saer: *death glare*

… *Shuts up* @_@;;

Another thing—I REALLY twisted around the words to the song up there. @_@;; It's all… funky, and stuff. You'll understand later on. ^_^;;

* * *

_Bleeding. She's bleeding… but she's so pretty, why is she bleeding?_

_ … She's drowning. Look, the surface—but she can't swim. She's sinking._

_ … Wait. The water's red. Is she bleeding in the water, or is she drowning in red water?_

Flash. Aidan saw nothing more of the drowning girl. Instead, his dreams took him to another place again—he recognized some of the faces. Remembered them.

The first was the girl who'd told him everything was going to be alright. That it was okay to cry—he wasn't crying like everyone else. He didn't like crying.

_She can't breathe. She's trying, but she can't._

_ Look—they're coming in. The men who took us away. But she can't breathe, can't they see?_

_ Now they see. Wait… why aren't they helping her? She can't breathe… They're turning… Going out the door? Why?_

_ She can't breathe! Can't they see that?!_

He woke suddenly, gasping for air and reaching towards the door, ready to stop them-

- but they weren't there. He franticly looked for the girl, and calmed when he saw that she was sleeping. Taking a deep breath of the funny-tasting air to calm himself, then lay down again on the cold steel floor.

If it even was metal. If anything was even real.

But he was too young for those sorts of thoughts, so he didn't think them. Although he was lost and scared, he never thought grown-up thoughts.

Because he was eight years old as of yesterday. The date on his watch was proof of that.

***

"… Alright," Saer spoke calmly, running her fingers through her hair in frustration, "don't any of you _dare_ tell me that you stayed up all night fighting, and have no plan in mind whatsoever."

She was greeted by a collective silence broken only by the buzzing of the lights overhead and the hum of machinery in the background. The planners all seemed to find something interesting on each respective part of the floor they were standing on, because that's what they were looking at.

"… And don't you _dare_ tell me that I'm leaving today with nothing but my own gut instinct, my weapons, and a really big-ass lap dog."

Cehkan was beginning to wonder if there happened to be some sort of organism she couldn't see resting on each and every one of their feet—talons, paws and other deformities included—because not a single one of the rose to meet her fiery gaze.

Of course, he'd let the lap dog comment rest, himself. They all knew better than to try Saer's patience when she was pissed. It rarely happened—but Saer was worried about those children.

Then he realized that his tail was between his legs.

Biting back a long string of curses, he tried to salvage whatever dignity that damnable tail had left him by striding unevenly to stand behind the furious blonde and put a mutated hand on her shoulder.

"It's not like we haven't improvised before."

She shrugged his touch away with a glare that would cause whatever heaven still remained to burst into flames. He knew that look well, but still cringed back a little. Damn, he felt like a dog. One of those little ones that just didn't shut up, then was suddenly back-handed by a very big, tall man.

"… I like having a fucking plan," she snapped, rather bitterly, glaring at the gathered with a look of vengance in her eyes, from which they immediately cringed. However, she was content to swear at them a couple more times, tell them that when she returned she would gut them all alive if they didn't at least _try_ to make up for this lack of respect, and stormed out into the sunlight. Grumbling fiercely, she strode quickly through the woods of Seles Park towards the ancient storm drain they'd modified for their own uses. Cehkan was hot on her heels, knowing full well that it was best to keep his trap shut when Saer was in one of her moods.

"Fucking piece of shit in a cock-sucking son of a bitch's…"

… Of course, nobody really talked when she was like that. It was like signing a death-wish.

Fixing her leather trench coat—the metal uniform was safer, he'd told her that a million times—the black-and-red-clad blonde swung her leg over her bike, gripping the handles that sprung to life at her touch. The controls and gears booted up immediately, their soft whir shrinking away into nothing as she revved the engine.

Damn, that thing was loud.

Ears flat against his skull, Cehkan—with a great amount of difficulty—managed up onto the bike himself, doing as best he could to fit on the minuscule thing.

Saer didn't even comment on how he would slow her own, for once. She just tucked her hair into the back of her jacket and slipped her helmet on.

Fumbling for a moment, the wolf-mutant managed to force the half-helmet contraption over his head, and, after a brief grunt to let her know he was ready, Saer lifted off the ground with a push of her leg. The hum of the engine echoed off the walls strewn with the roots of trees, the ancient compound of concrete—an odd recipe that was no longer in use—broken by the growing plants.

The big wolf-mutant was nearly thrown from the bike when Saer kicked it into gear. Flattening his ears to his skull and fighting off a migrane from the echoes, he held on tight as she leaned forwards, putting everything she had into this run.

Scarry thing she was, when pissed.

He wanted very much to whimper, but, for once, his pride got in the way. While revelling in that small triumph, he realized she was slowing down. _Thankyouthankyouthankyouthank…_

She stopped rather abruptly as well, and, this time, the bigger of the two was thrown from the bike to land ten feet away. Sputtering, he scrambled to four paws and turned to glare at the blonde with whatever dignity his fall hadn't taken away, then realized that she wasn't even smirking at him.

"We have no fucking clue what we're doing, you know."

He sat, brows furrowed. "… Saving the kids."

There was a day when their roles would have been reversed—Saer the one who wanted to rush into action, and he the planner and thinker. 

That was when he realized she was oddly out of character. Normally she wouldn't _mind_ having not an idea of what was going to happen…

She leaned against the sewer wall, arm crossed over her chest. "I don't like this mission at all. They don't normally take a store of kids _that_ big from one area—_something_ had to have happened."

He shook his head. "What if the data was translated incorrectly?"

She snorted. "We had _Githen_ working on it. He's never wrong. Ever."

He knew it, too. The kid had a knack for the unusual codes or offbeat oddities that wound around the damned Company's everyday rituals, so he ended up being the youngest hacker in their organization—and the best always went to Air.

Air consisted of three members; Saer, Githen, and Jheil. The other Factions had at least twenty members; yet Air was at the top, took only the missions deemed 'impossible,' and, thanks to Githen, cracked every code in ten minutes that would take the other teams combined a full year.

Then there was Saer.

How many times had he warned her, given her penalties for near-suicide stunts on missions? She would risk everything for her goal, and she didn't _care_ what the cost was. As long as the mission was successful. 'Live to see another day' was never on her 'to-do' list.

He tried to fix that. Harsher penalties suddenly came hard to come by as the Company's actions became harder and harder to counter, and soon she was slipping out from a desk stacked high with paperwork to fight and come home having risked her life twenty times in one hour. Even _Githen_ was worried about her—and he was the most care-free person on the _planet_, let alone the rest of the world.

He wondered what she'd do this time.

"… Let's just go," she mumbled, climbing back onto the bike. "We'll figure it out when we get there."

***

"Sir."

This place had a _disgusting_ love of formalities, didn't it? He supposed that was what he really hated about it. It was easy enough to get used to the freaks of nature it produced, or even the loud wails coming from every direction. He didn't care much about what humans did on their own time—and he used the term 'human' rather loosely—or, even any time during their pitiful existances. As long as they gave him a good ride along the way. He spun, rather slowly in the chair—heh, they _swivelled_. Now _that_ was cool… He wondered what sex was like in one of these things.

Turning his attention away from the chair, he snatched a cube that was made of smaller, coloured cubes off the desk. "So, what _exactly_ are you supposed to do with these things? Make the colours match?"

The attendant blinked at him, slowly, then nodded. "Sir," she repeated, but stopped as she realized he wasn't listening. He was…

… Playing with the cube. And most certainly _not_ in the way it was intended to be used.

Cheeks flushed a little, she coughed rather loudly, stepping forwards to touch his shoulder.

"… Um, _sir_…"

He leaned back in the chair—hey, they could lean back pretty damn far… He grinned a little, thinking of the massive possibilities one of these chairs would provide him, not even noticing that he'd bumped into the attendent in his rather indecent plotting. She backed away almost immediately, feeling a fierce heat rising in her face.

"_Sir_-!"

He sat up immediately, blinking at her, as if he'd forgotten she was there. Tilting his head to the side slightly, he looked her up and down before stopping his gaze at her chest and whistling slowly.

"_Damn_, they didn't make them like you've got them, back in the day…" He looked up at her face, frowning past a somewhat dishevelled head of long red. "Are those real?"

Absently fiddling with her glasses with one hand and coughing into her other to hide the red she was _sure_ had to be blazing, she forced her gaze to her feet. "… This is _not_ appropriate buisiness talk, sir…"

He blew a strand of hair out of his face at that, smiling in a fashion almost bittersweet at her before standing, slowly, and strolling rather absently towards her, his gaze not once lingering from the buttons on the front of her uniform.

He gently touched her chin with a finger, then guided her gaze back up to meet his. She gasped slightly, taken aback by the bright gold his eyes were—they were white a moment before, weren't they…?

With his free hand, he gently carressed her hip, then slowly began working his way upward to the button at the nape of her neck, which a single finger lingered on as he captured her gaze with his own.

"Now," he whispered, voice liquid smooth—tempting as sin—as he took his finger off the button and removed her glasses. Dropping them carelessly to the floor, he cintinued as his hand moved to the hair clasp she was wearing. "-If we all followed protocol every waking moment of our lives, we would most certainly _not_ be having any fun whatsoever, would we?"

Lost within his eyes—now they were green?—she stammered, slowly, as platinum hair tumbled free of its confinements. "I-I… the boss… I.. she… wants… I want… oh, fuck…"

She wondered, vaugly, if he'd even been wearing a shirt in the first place. She'd _thought_ he had… she could have _sworn_…

Then he looked away with a sigh, moving from her and towards the door, sticking his hands into the pockets of a large jacket he had most definitely _not_ been adorned with moments before. "But, if you wish, then protocol shall be the one master of our lives… However short or long they may be." He reached for the door handle.

"No!" she gasped, fingers flying to her mouth. "No… I don't want that… I want…"

He was beside her in a breath, fingers lingering invitingly on that first button again. "What?" he breathed into her ear before nibbling gently on the lobe. He paused again. "_What _do you want right _now_, more than anything else?"

"_You_," she gapsed, clutching at his shoulders—miraculously bare again. "Fuck me, _now_."

Was he one to turn a woman down?

He grinned at that, forcing her back onto the chair and slowly undoing the button—only to have her rip the shirt from her own body in a mad, lustful craze.

Most certainly not.

The door burst open, and two _very_ armed guards stormed in, the one and only boss at their heels. The woman beneath him yelped silently, snatching up the remnants of her shirt and darting out from underneath him, only to trip as the chair moved and to fall head over heels in a heap on the floor. Clutching the remnants of her outfit, she attempted to smooth down the dissarrayed mess her hair had become before reaching into her skirt pocket for a metal make-up case.

The red-head turned to them, looking like he'd done nothing but sit and watch a holo-movie all day long, fully clothed in his usual attire.

"You're no fun," he sighed, brushing bright red aside. "She's damn sexy. Knows what she's doing, too, which is always a bonus."

The woman behind the two guards growled in exhasperation, rubbing her forhead. "Bring her to a room and get her another uniform. Do it quietly."

They complied, dragging the slightly dazed woman out of the room as she snatched up the hair accessory on the way, somewhat confused that she hadn't been fired for her irrational behaviour.

After the door slid shut, she turned her glare upon the red-headed man. "I would very much appreciate it if you didn't seduce my employees when I need your help on important matters. I thought we agreed to this."

He pouted playfully at her, acting almost like a small child as he examined the sudden appearance of a pattern of smeared lipstick on the floor. "Well, it's _your_ fault for the messenger being so damn sexy. Honestly—did you see the _size_ of those things? _Now_ I'm beginning to see how your technology really _does_ improve the quality of life on this planet…" He caught the look she gave him at that. "What? It's the truth."

She ignored him rather pointedly, stepping forwards and glaring at him. "My office. _Now_."

He shrugged, smiled at her, and exited the room without further argument—although he was rather dissappointed that she refused to answer to his sly glances up and down her figure.

She looked down at the apartment number scrawled on the floor and growled, turning to follow—not noticing an object lying next to it.

The puzzle cube sat where he'd dropped it—solved.

* * *

THE SHORT CHAPTER VIRUS STRIKES AGAIN! MWA!.

… Hey, random question: how come every time I bring HIM into a story, he either FUCKS somebody or comes increadibly close to doing so?

Leon: Because that's all he ever does…?

… Good point. *coughs* ONTO THE REVIEWS~!

Shade — I've yet to see what my science teacher thinks of him, but I like him too. ^_^

Fifi — Dwagon? Yeah, I went for that. ^_^ Everyone always makes Dragons mystical and smart and important… Or something. Except Ark. *points at Black Legacies* ^_^

DemonGod — *is not used to praise* … ^_^;; Err, Sin's Torment happened… *points to that ficcy* … and there's another fic in between the two that's all spoiler-iffic for these two, so it's not getting posted until they're both done… But, there WILL be explanaions. Eventually. You'll just have to be confused as hell until they actually happen. ^_^;;


	4. You've Woken up the Demon in Me

The Legend Within  
_by shike77_  
**Chapter IV**  
_"The world is a scary place__  
Now that **you've woken up the demon in me**"_  
_- __"Down with the Sickness"_, by Disturbed

And there's ALWAYS time to sit down in the middle of an enemy base and make sex jokes. amused herself writing it

… --;; ::falls over:: God, I'm tired. Hope you people are happy—long-ass chapter. Do I _have_ to edit this? Really?

(Note: Yesh, I've done that. Woots for me. If there's any glaring mistakes—git over it. I'm tired, and you guys're lucky I managed this before finals. XD!)

shike: ::drools madly, clawing at screenshots and video of the next Zelda game::

Saer: Well, crap. Here we go again.

shike: Horseback… fighting… sword… HORSIE!!

Leon: … I thought Nig was doing a better job of hiding the crack than that.

Nig: HEY!

shike: … Preciousssss… ::claws at the computer screen:: PRECCCIOUSSSSS…

Saer: We're never going to hear the end of this.

Leon: Nope.

shike: ::continues on with being rather pathetic::

I mean, what, a 2005 Japanese release date? I'm going to have had a few summer jobs, by then… Bwahaha… ::drool:: What, you haven't heard of the new Zelda game? Then go… IGN or something. I'm too lazy to find a link for you. --;; JUST GO DROOL, DAMNIT.

I am a Zelda fan until the day I die. Live with it.

* * *

You'd think someone would actually be keeping an eye on the job—what with rumours of a break-in from the rebel factions and all—and at least _try_ to keep their eyes open.

This man certainly didn't think so. In fact, guard duty was another form of naptime. All he had to do was wake up every hour or so when his com buzzed to give a report. He didn't understand why anyone even used _human_ sentries anymore—robots were far more efficient. Scanners indicated the position of everything that moved in that building, so there was obviously no use of humans in the hallways…

"All clear," he mumbled into the device before clicking it off and heading for a break.

He stopped at the sight of four letters scrawled on the wall in blood.

_RFOE_

Reaching for his com, he opened his mouth—

—but a sword was sticking through his brain, so he couldn't speak, let alone guide his hand the rest of the way to the communication tool.

Drawing the weapon back, Saer let the man drop to the floor with a sigh.

"They just don't make them like they used to," she mused, wiping the brain matter off her blade on the man's jacket. Cehkan padded up behind her—on all fours—grabbed the man's clothing, and proceeded to drag him out of the hallway. After prying apart the man's communicator, she snatched a mechanism off her belt and scanned the chips inside. After a few near-silent beeps, her own com device picked up the conversations taking place.

Listening carefully, she walked over to the man's body and flicked out a mechanized switchblade. After quickly engraving _RFOE_ into his torso, she headed back out into the hallway, where Cehkan was taking care of the security camera.

Spitting the now-broken electrical device out of his mouth, Cehkan's ears flicked back and forth as he listened to sounds in the hallway.

"… Good," she whispered, glancing over to her partner. "We've got an hour to get to that ship before buddy boy here is supposed to report back and alarms sound."

"Bob."

"What?"

"His name was Bob," the mutated wolf continued, gesturing to the man's nametag, which he held in one paw. _Robert Chiem._

She sent him a look through her open visor in her helmet. "… I don't _care_ what his name was, as long as he's dead and stays that way."

Her com crackled.

"… Maybe you should pay tribute to the almighty Bob?"

"Shut up, Sparrow."

Cehkan cracked a wolfish grin at her, a gesture that didn't cease at the glare she sent his way. Sword in hand, she moved down the hallway, checking to make sure the next passage was clear before moving on.

The redhead absently moved along the lines of the children, occasionally kneeling down to examine one of them closer, or admiring the handiwork on their clothing. Odd letters, they were… almost fascinating, the way they were written. Running his hand over the chest of a small girl, he admired the rather awkward-looking rabbit on her clothing. At least, he _thought_ it was a rabbit… it looked nothing like the real thing.

Of course, he thought with a grin, technology could make _wonderful_ things happen without the help of magic. Like ugly women could all be beautiful. In fact, he decided that there should have been a law—all women must make modifications to their bodies so that there _would_ be a world full of—

He stopped, suddenly, frowning. A… jolt? Of magic?

After a blink or two, he cast his gaze and senses around the room. The children knocked out by the fumes—sleeping gas, was it?—all lay on the ground, unmoving. With a slight frown, he stood, feeling the tug again.

Catching the source this time, he absently stepped over the little humans, white eyes fixated on a boy curled up in the corner.

He knelt down beside the child, running his gaze over the creature's figure. Brushing aside tousled brown hair, he absently ran his fingers along the boy's forehead.

The attraction of magic snapped into place, creating a funnel for the thoughts and visions the boy was experiencing with a jolt of essence.

_… Her eyes widened and she drew away, watching as the flesh she'd just torn melded together, fresh and pale._

_ He smiled, softly, already tasting her fear._

_ "I missed you," he whispered, the sound no more than air passing over his lips._

He drew away from the boy with a wicked grin that looked so utterly out of place—the complete opposite of the soft, bittersweet smile he was so fond of.

"She's here," he breathed.

He spun to his feet, turning to face the guards who were staring at him.

"I want this boy brought to my quarters when he wakes. He amuses me."

They nodded tersely before moving aside as he walked past. One reached to his com and relayed the order to someone on the other end, including his chosen pet's code number.

The red-head was rather content to stroll along down the hallway, setting a fast walking pace that he was positive they wouldn't be able to keep up with.

"Sir, we're to take you straight back to your quarters…"

He spun around, examining the speaker closely, under the cover of his hair. After a smile, he replied, "Oh, I'm sure I can find my own way back. I just want to see the sights… Stretch my legs. Haven't had a decent walk in a while, you know." He winked. "The sex is pretty good though, I must say. People are dropping themselves on me left right and center."

The guard raised his weapon. "Sir, we have our orders."

Still wearing that smile, he raised his hand, as if he were signaling for them to stop. "Unfortunately for you, they conflict with my desires."

His facial expression never changed as fire started to grow on his fingertips, swelling and flaring as he poured more magic into the spell.

"And what _I_ want is the most important thing right now."

They stared, slack-jawed, at what was becoming a blazing inferno in front of their eyes.

Covered in the brilliant, dancing element, yet completely untouched by it, the redhead suddenly dropped all pretence of humour. White eyes narrowed and he hissed, "So you're not going to make that mistake again."

They didn't have time to fire their weapons, because the metal had already melted and burned straight through their flesh.

They certainly didn't have time to scream, but no one would have heard them anyway.

Onica did _not_ like being discovered. Not at all.

Neither did she like being tossed around like a rag doll by two large, burly men, speaking the most bizarre language she'd ever heard. In spite of the massive amount of weak struggling she managed to pull off, she was promptly dragged through the hallways with a crude gag stuck in her mouth that kept her from screaming. Sobbing, she eventually gave up, instead struggling to her feet so that she could walk—although a more accurate word might have been stumble, considering she could barely move her legs—in tow, and at least retain _some_ of her dignity.

Promptly after the men dragged her through a doorway—that she dimly remembered moved on its own—she was thrown to the ground, much to the cheers of _more _men… She whimpered a small, "Please God no," as she lay on the cold metal, gasping and fighting off tears that threatened to stream down her face.

She was kicked sharply, then grabbed by her hair and forced to stand. Wavering, she opened dark blue eyes and watched as he placed something that looked like it was out of Star Wars up against her throat. He grunted something, and the men in the crowd—she could see them all, now, advancing—yelled their agreement. Onica looked up at her captor, bewildered, then screamed as he hit her clean across the face, the metal of his ring digging into her eye. Shaking and choking on fits of sobs, she tried to crawl away with one arm, her other hand pressed to the wounded eye.

She was grabbed, suddenly, and yanked to her feet again, whereupon she felt another fist collide with her now-blind side. As she fell again, screaming in pain, she felt someone grab her wrist and yank her arm fiercely.

There was a rusty taste in her mouth.

Choking on her own blood, she tried to move her hand away from whoever held it, but soon realized that she was being held down by this group of men. Trying vainly to struggle away from their grasp—weakly, because of the agony—she was slapped again by the man with the ring.

Then someone lay on her chest, clawing at her clothes, and she started screaming again, even though her voice was hoarse.

Quite suddenly, someone else joined in on her screaming and she was let loose by her captors.

Struggling away, she gasped for breath in between sobs of pain as she dragged herself away, praying to God she'd find a corner to crawl up and die in.

Eventually, she did find a corner, and she curled up into a ball, rocking back and forth as she whimpered her pain in a pattern that might have been humming the lullaby her mother sang her, but she wasn't sure.

Saer's face was passive as she lifted her weapon to eye-level, watching the blood run along the engravings in the blade as if it were some idle entertainment befitting a child's attention.

"See you in hell, bastards," she grumbled, using a man's shirt to clean off the sword before pressing the combination of switches that retracted the metal. After clipping the canister to her belt, she flipped out the switchblade and proceeded to carve the initials into the corpses.

Cehkan decided to leave her to her own devices, instead heading for the blonde curled up in the corner.

"She looks pretty bad," he grumbled, sniffing the blood on her face cautiously. The area around and on her right eye was a mass of ripped skin, exposed bone and blood. He assumed the eye itself had caved in because of how flat her eyelid was—or at least, what was left of it.

She moved her head to look at him with her eye _not_ mauled into shreds, and Cehkan's mouth hit the floor.

"… Falcon…"

"Busy," she mumbled, carving the initials into the ringleader's… unmentionables.

"… You _really_ need to take a look at this kid."

She finished the E, then looked up at him through the mass tangles of her hair. "Why?"

He sent a _look_ her way. "Because I'm your boss," he replied sarcastically, although it came out as more of a growl.

She sighed, brushing away strands of blonde and red with blood-stained hands. Before standing and stepping over the bodies, walking with a little indignance to examine his find.

After a moment, she shrugged. "… Okay, Puppy, I give up. What's so special about her?"

He stared at the blonde for a moment, then looked back to the girl who was _also_ staring up at Saer. He blinked, then continued to move his gaze between the two for a few moments, as if doing so would help rid of his speechlessness.

"… But, she looks _exactly_ like you!"

"Let me see!" Githen's voice jumped out through the communicator, and Jheil yelped as there was a sound of thunking and moving chairs—Githen had just knocked him over.

Saer rolled her eyes, grabbing a camera only large enough to be held between two of her fingers. After squeezing the item slightly, the small light flipped on.

"… Holy hell, she does."

Saer frowned at that, looking the girl huddled in the corner up and down, then snorted. "Right. We're _nothing_ alike."

"But look…" the words died on Cekhan's tongue as he noticed that there _was_ something different about the two of them. It wasn't the fact that there was no natural red in this girl's eye or hair, or that she was a bloody mess, but something he couldn't place… not yet.

"See what I mean?" she replied, putting the camera away. Even though none of them did, they remained silent as she knelt down beside the girl.

"What's your name?"

She paused, then shifted further away, mumbling incoherent phrases and eyeing them warily.

Saer stood, then, frowning. "Did you get any of that, Sparrow?"

"… Yeah," he replied, sounding startled. "She said, 'Who the hell are you?'"

Saer glanced over at Cehkan, who sent her a confused look right back. They'd never heard anything like it, how did he figure it out that fast? "How do you know that?"

"It's the exact same stuff used on that code you guys had me crack."

Wide-eyed, Cehkan looked to the bloody girl again. "… But, she's got to be older than fifteen. That's… too old. They don't harvest kids older than ten…"

Saer rolled her eyes. "She might have been a stowaway." Slipping her helmet back on, she continued, "If she was one of the kids they wanted, they sure as hell wouldn't let the drunkards have her."

Cehkan nodded. "Good point. Sparrow, how do you calm her down?"

There was a moment of shifting papers, moving chairs, and then he piped up. "Patch me through. I'll talk to her."

Saer obediently turned up her radio and held it closer to the girl.

"… Alrighty, then," Githen must have been grinning. "Time to sing for my supper…"

"Ma'am…"

"Yes?"

"… There's been a slight mishap."

The woman glanced back at the attendant, who was twitching nervously under her red-eyed glare.

"Continue."

He swallowed, largely, then took a deep breath. "There were two stowaways in the cargo bay and not one, like we planned. The girl was conscious, and she was dragged away by some of the less…" he gulped again, "Sober employees."

She stood. "And _why_ hasn't anyone dealt with them yet?!"

He took a step back, shivering.

"That's… not it. The guards watching _him_ haven't reported since they requested transfer of _his_ pick of the cargo. And _he_ hasn't reached his room, either."

She sat down, fair skin furrowed in heavy thought. "Anything else?"

He nodded, attempting to calm his nerves with deep breaths.

"… Cameras in the room where they brought the girl and started beating her are no longer functioning. We have no idea what happened to her."

He closed his eyes. "The guard in hallway C-34 is not responding to hails."

She watched him closely for a moment, then stood, smoothing out the business suit currently adorned on her small, frail frame.

"… It seems the Factions strike again," she replied, scowling. "But he's loose. And we know that when he wants something," she sighed, as if the fact irritated her, "he gets it. No matter what."

"… Ma'am?"

She looked to him, a dangerous glint in her eyes. "Make sure every employee is safe within the secure rooms, out of harm's way. It's time to test my newest toy."

"Calm down. We won't hurt you."

Onica started a little at the sound of plain—however heavily accented—English, but it sounded so much better than whatever was being thrown around her.

"What's your name?"

She frowned. Was that… a kid? By the sound of him , he couldn't be any older than… eight? Maybe?

"O-Onica…" she stammered, visibly. "Where am I?"

"It's okay, we'll get you out of here. These are my friends—Falcon and Wolf. They'll help you."

She looked up with her one working eye, then slowly tried to get to her feet. The kid spouted something in that odd language, and the girl in the helmet—she looked familiar—helped her stand. Onica was then, shivering, handed to a now-standing wolf. The monstrous creature held her easily in piggy-back fashion as if she weighed nothing.

… God, he was huge.

Onica clutched the silver cross around her neck with a free hand, but realized that she felt safe. They'd help her. They could talk to her. They could…

… _Leon._

Where was Leon? She almost panicked at the thought of someone hurting him, so she immediately looked to the small device the kid was talking through.

"Where's Leon?!" she panted, struggling a little against the firm hold this wolf had on her.

"… Who?"

She shifted again, but stopped struggling at the glare she received from the wolf… thing. "My friend… Leon… he… he's bleeding…"

She didn't remember passing out, and she didn't remember exactly _when_ she did. Those words were the last thing she could clearly recall—and the only thing she was aware of for quite some time afterwards.

Githen sighed as the girl's incoherent babbling slowed and finally stopped, leaning back in his chair with a scowl on his young face. Slipping the goggles back above his eyes, he scratched his head and shrugged.

"… Uhm, yeah. She's not doing too hot. I _think_ Leon is a name, but I'm not sure…" He gave a small, innocent grin, knowing that neither could see it. "Sorry."

Jheil shook his head. "She's most likely just collapsed from blood loss," he muttered. "Be careful, although—try not to give her anything you find there."

"I don't need a lecture, Owl," Saer grumbled as Cehkan snorted. Jheil rolled his eyes, shifting a little uncomfortably.

"Hey, guys, let's take a quick break while you guys do something about her head. We're running early on the hour mark.," Githen interrupted, slipping the goggles back over his eyes. Lines of text immediately began appearing on the twin screens as he hooked the various wires he kept tied around his arms or stuffed in pockets on massive pants six sizes too large for him. After pressing a few buttons on the laser-keyboard in front of him, the text changed to a large map.

"… 'Kay, Saer? You guys should be in a mess hall—there's computers to your left…"

"… That would be the door."

"My bad," he grinned sheepishly. "To your right. Hook me up."

After a few moments of fumbling with wires and strings of curses, the map was replaced by a login screen. There was little effort needed to bypass the security using memorized patterns of ones and zeroes, and soon Githen was downloading data off the main database while mosing through some of the more interesting files.

"… Hey, Jheil, what's a… I dunno how to say it… Erection?"

Jheil paused in running through an analysis of the girl's wounds, looking at the youngest member of Air Faction with a _very_ befuddled expression on his face.

"… Er… It's… Uh…"

"That's it, _you're_ not going to be the one telling him about the birds and the bees," Saer commented dryly. "What's _that_ got to do with anything, Sparrow?"

"… I dunno. It's on some guy's journally thing. What's faggot mean?"

Jheil had never looked more uncomfortable in the entire time Githen had known him, the boy resolved, and he almost wanted to picture the grin on Cehkan's face. Saer was most likely smirking in that way of hers—she never laughed much, and she liked to avoid answering to his pestering about it, so her reaction was well-predicted.

"It's a bundle of sticks," Saer mused, a tinge of humour in her voice.

"… And… fucking?"

She sighed. "Githen, if it's not that important, I think it could wait until later."

"… Okay," he grumbled, but then perked up once he decided that he knew enough of the message to comprehend it. "So, apparently, fucking bundles of sticks make people have whatever erections are. That's cool."

He could actually _hear_ Cehkan laughing at that one, and—to his surprise—Saer was, too. Success? But at what? What was so funny? Jheil didn't seem to think it was too funny. In fact, he was suddenly blushing rather profusely and sputtering random syllables, just like he did when Saer insulted him and he couldn't think of a comeback. But, she'd barely even _said_ anything…!

"I've stopped the blood flow on this kid, so let's get moving," Saer interrupted after her and Cehkan had their good laugh. The text was replaced by the maps on Githen's goggles once she removed the wires, and he watched the little dots representing his friends leave the room and head into the hallways.

So, they'd emptied the halls just for him. Oh, how he felt loved.

The man who called himself the Shifter watched with colourless eyes the laser projections in front of him, a bemused expression on his face at the large dog and the two blondes who looked so much alike to any eyes but his own.

"Where are you headed, little girl?" he mused to himself, watching them through a machine. "I wonder if it's straight to me…?"

He grinned darkly, closing his eyes and passing his hand over the lids, fingertips brushing along skin fabricated from his own whims in a fashion that the pitiful mortals he spoke to should recognize as his. Very few knew exactly what hide was his own.

"I haven't forgotten, beautiful, the taste of your steel."

Baring his teeth in a venomous fashion at the memory of the _pain_—but it was only a flash, and then he willed it away. Who needed to dwell on the pain, when there was always the chance for a sweet revenge?

He opened his eyes, watching as the three passed by a sign on the wall—a direction sign. They _were_ headed right towards him.

"Right where I want you, pet," he breathed, half-laughing. "_You're_ the one who's forgotten. Forgotten everything."

He sat down in the spinning chair and leaned back, placing his feet on the panel that projected the buttons made from light.

"Then I'll just have to _make_ you remember the pain, siren."

Aidan was shivering over in a corner, shaking off the remnants of yet another nightmare… A red-headed man had invaded his dreams, he knew, even as he dreamt about that same man… but, why would he do that? All he was doing was dreaming… Not like the time he stopped the ball, and everyone in the class stared at him like he was a freak. It wasn't anything special…

Then the girl over in the other corner woke up. Aidan was about to talk to her, but then she started making noises…

Aidan almost couldn't breathe for a moment. _No, no, no, no, no…_

He stood on shaky legs and went over to her, tripping over still-sleeping children. She was clawing at her clothing, eyes wide, trying to find something…

_She can't breathe. She can't breathe…_

The last time his dreams came true… Tears welled up in his eyes. _Not again…!_

He started screaming for help. The people would come in, he knew. Maybe he could stop them from turning around and leaving… Maybe he could help her. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad. Maybe…

They _did_ come in, and they paused. One of them jabbered something incomprehensible at him, and he couldn't help but stare blankly at… it. He realized then how foggy his dreams really were, because—although human in shape—these… _things_ were definitely _not_ what he dreamt they would be.

He didn't have much time to pause and think of their composition, because, sure enough, they turned around and moved out the door—shouting things like mad in some language he couldn't understand.

What he _didn't_ dream was that they'd fall back into the room, twitching as the lights that were their eyes slowly faded to black, and that a _very_ large wolf would stalk in on his hind legs and look right at them.

Aidan was very proud that he didn't wet himself.

Saer and Cehkan made a _very_ large point of not mentioning how there were no guards in the hallways. Once, Saer decided to finger the hidden cameras to see what kind of reaction she'd get—which was none. Highly disappointed at lack of a fight, she trudged on ahead of Cehkan, scouting around corners and the like, until they finally arrived at the ship's docking bay.

"Alright," Saer took a deep breath, holding out a small scanning device. "Owl, what'cha got?"

"One sign of life in the area on the way to the cockpit—but from here, it's hard to tell who it is. Plenty in the lower areas of the ship that are closer to you, but they could be passengers or lab rats. There's about four robots in that area… by their model, they're human-shaped."

"I'll bet ten credits they're the rats down there," Saer muttered. "Any passengers or pilots should have gotten off by now."

"I'd take that bet, but I value my money," Cehkan muttered, eyes narrowed. "You go for the cockpit and see to the person there; I'm going to kick some metal ass."

"That's _my_ line," she grumbled, flicking the sensor away.

"Just do what you're told."

She rolled her eyes at that, and started jogging towards the ship. Cehkan followed at a trot, veering to the right instead of following Saer, his nose already picking up the smell of metal and humans… odd-smelling humans, at that.

They smelt like the girl he was carrying.

He leaned her prone body against a wall, then, standing as tall as he could without touching the ceiling, he made his way around the next corner.

Someone was screaming something that he couldn't understand… a kid, by the sound of it. His ears twitched a little. _Damn_, that kid had a set of lungs on him.

He peered around the next corner, ears flat against his skull, and noticed two of four robots positioned there—human in shape, for sure—enter the room the screaming was coming from, then start shouting back.

"DO YOU REQUIRE AID, SPECIMEN?"

Cehkan stiffened immediately at that _word_.

_"… He'll make a fine specimen. Take him, too."_

He howled fiercely, and, without further thought, leapt for the closest robot.

After colliding and knocking over the first one, he grabbed its head in his teeth and ripped it off, circuits and wire ripping easier than muscle and tendon.

_This_ was what he missed about the field. _Revenge_.

The second robot aimed to fire at him. It was dealt with easily—those things were not built to handle three hundred pounds of wolf. Fur bristling, he turned to look at the next targets.

They were easy, too. All he had to do was throw the remains of the first robot into the two of them, and they promptly fell back into the room—in a considerable amount more pieces than they had walked in as.

Cehkan stalked forwards, towering over the remains of the robots darkly and glaring about the room, where silence had just hit home. Blue eyes darted over to the figure of a boy staring, wide-eyed and gaping, at him, sitting next to a girl…

… Who seemed not to be breathing.

Cehkan fell forward onto all fours—he was less threatening that way—and tentatively sniffed the girl… her throat. There was _something_ wrong with her throat…

Wide-eyed, he painfully manipulated his paws into finger again and hit the com button around his neck.

"Saer, get the hell over here."

Saer, in the meantime, was having a few problems of her own.

Crouching over a rather abruptly dumped body of a human, teenage boy, she temporarily removed her glove and checked for a pulse. It was there, sure enough. Slipping the leather item back on, she frowned a little before looking back to him. Odd… he looked familiar.

She turned him over so he was lying on his back, at first to examine the scabbed-over wound on his head, then to give him a quick look-over. He wasn't the most masculine of men, and almost had a naïve look to him. A few small cuts other than the large one on his head and one small bruise on his chin were the most of injuries on his dirt and grime-covered face… Odd. Was he supposed to be unclean? She almost thought not.

He kept his rich, somewhat dirty blonde hair long, and some of the strands were trapped in the large scab. Wincing at that, she moved to pull them out, then realized that wound had only just recently closed, by the look of it. She wouldn't risk opening it again so soon.

He winced, suddenly, and she didn't move as his eyes tentatively opened, slowly and wearily, to blink once or twice blearily as he looked up at her.

The first thing she thought was how impossibly pale his eyes were. A soft pastel green, they looked the kind that could easily calm or frighten—depending, she added, on the personality of this kid. There almost looked to be no definite line between iris and white; the two colours just simply blended in with each other naturally. A strange look passed over them, momentarily, and he muttered something incomprehensible that he almost thought to be a question.

"Soa," she grumbled, leaning back on her heels. "I'm dealing with fucking _kids_ on all sides, today. I sure as _hell_ don't want to _baby-sit_…"

Glancing back at him, she noticed that he was struggling to sit up. She helped him lean against the wall closest to him, and noticed that he was studying her rather closely, as if trying to decide friend from foe.

With a sigh, she reached for her belt and unclipped one of the rectangular canisters on it. After pressing a button, a small hole appeared in the top. She took a swig from it, to show it was a drink, then handed it to him. He accepted it, and, after a moment's hesitation, took a small sip. After that, he seemed to think it safe, so he greedily downed the whole thing before handing it back with a small, lop-sided smile of apology. She smiled a little at that, mainly so as not to scare him, taking it back and clipping onto her belt once again.

She pointed to herself. "Saer."

His eyes narrowed, momentarily, at what she figured was the foreign sound of her name to him, but he repeated it, slowly. His accent wasn't that bad, either. At least he didn't mistake it for 'Sarah.'

After a little wait, he replied, suddenly understanding what it was she wanted. "Leon."

She nodded, repeating his own name, only just then realizing that the girl they'd found was babbling that particular word over and over again… He knew her.

Then he might know what happened. He _might_ know what was going on.

_Then again…_ He didn't exactly _look_ like he understood the situation. At the moment, he had realized that he had hair virtually glued to his forehead by dried blood, and as thus was trying, slowly and rather painfully, to remove it, strand by agonizing strand. In fact, he looked _very_ much like a random kid caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Actually, the first thing she felt like comparing him to was a naïve schoolboy, but that was just her ever-so-humble opinion.

She stood, then, ignoring the confused looks he sent her, and leaned against the cockpit door. She attached a wire to the small panel next to the door, waited briefly for Githen to hack the codes, and stepped back once the door slid open. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leon struggle to his feet, a puzzled look on his face as he surveyed his surroundings. Rubbing his eyes with his sleeve, he gingerly touched his forehead, and, with a grimace, continued pulling the strands of hair out of his wound.

Saer did nothing to stop him, listening to the satisfactory whir of miniscule gears and metal grinding on metal as her guns took shape. Smirking grimly to herself, the Air Faction member stepped into the cockpit, guns pointing at two disabled pilot robots. With a sigh, she strode forward, neatly blasted a nicely sized hole in each bot's metallic body before approaching the console. Sticking the wires into the console, she waited for Githen to hack into the machine, leaving the computer the size of her fingertip on the floor as she leaned against the wall, absently fiddling with the numerous devices on her belt.

Leon stood there rather awkwardly, staring at her, at the lights flashing in front of them, then back at her. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but stopped, seeming to realize that she wouldn't understand him, anyway.

Either that, or he figured out that she was the kind of person that didn't appreciate talk very much.

With a small smirk at that thought, she examined Leon again, out of the corner of her eye, watching him as he looked uneasily about the confined area. He stood strangely, waving a little back and forth, almost slouching—although it seemed closer to shrinking away from something. He looked rather timid and docile, more lithe than muscular, facts which he supposed were owing to his age—seventeen? Sixteen, at the least.

Githen crowed affirmation as the ship's engines started to warm up. It would take some time to physically _leave_ the area, she knew, but it was smooth sailing from there on out. Cehkan could smell out any tracking devices their scans missed, and the rest was a breeze.

Then her com sparked to life.

"Saer, get the hell over here."

She sighed at that, glancing over at the suddenly _very_ startled Leon, eyes wide as he looked around for the new source of sound. Saer gestured for him to be calm, and, after hesitation, he nodded, slowly sitting back down and resting his head against the cold, metallic wall behind him. He wasn't looking too good, she realized with a start.

"I'm babysitting," she grumbled in a short reply, removing her glove again to feel Leon's forehead, gingerly. No, he wasn't alright… Most likely recovering from some sort of fever, and not too well, it seemed.

"I've got a kid down here who can't breathe. I think it's Asthma."

She sighed at that, reaching for a contraption on her belt.

"… Be right there."

Removing the rectangular canister, she opened it and slipped out a cylinder. After pressing her glove into the reader, it bleeped in assent and a long bar slid out of each side, resulting in a staff. Handing the weapon to Leon, she pressed the empty container to her belt and signaled for him to stay put before jogging off down the halls.

Leon didn't quite know what was happening. While taking a break from the suddenly dubious effort of standing, a little shocked at the sound of the voice coming from nowhere. Saer—her name, he thought—had spoken little more than her own introduction throughout the few minutes he'd spent in her company, so it was small wonder he'd be frightened by a straight-on blast of complicated words. Especially when the speaker couldn't seem to get his jaw around them right.

That last thought had come to him when Saer replied. Her own sentence structure was smooth, flowing—it didn't matter that her tone was harsh and her comment must have been something the person she was speaking to did _not_ want to hear.

Then, suddenly, a long metal stick was thrust into his hands, and he was left to stare at the rather bland plainness of it while she darted off, past the corner. He opened his mouth to call her back, but doubted she wanted him to do so. He sighed, curling up closer to the wall. She wouldn't have understood him, anyway…

He _might _have fallen asleep_—_if so, it was only a fleeting moment, and suddenly he was awake again, pulling the metal… thing… closer to himself for protection. A foreign instinct for survival ruled his actions, almost for a second, but he couldn't bring himself to stand. He just moved to protect his battered body—or, more likely, his body moved on its own.

There was a tall man standing over him, watching him peculiarly with eyes that reminded Leon of something a person would see in a horror flick—pure white. Red hair drifted across features that were eerily perfect—_far_ too perfect to be real. In spite of momentarily considering the possibility of dreaming, Leon's body tensed as soon as sight registered the smirk on the man's face. Gears turned, and Leon realized he'd seen the man before…

… But _where_?

The man was speaking, Leon knew, but the words were so impossibly foreign that he never could have hoped to understand them. Eyes narrowed, lips parted a little, but Leon never replied. He had a feeling that, perhaps, if he did, the man would have wound his own words straight back at him, and somehow figure out the English language with just those few words spoken. It was a strange sensation, and one that seemed oddly ridiculous, even at the time, but he accepted it, and refused to speak.

The man tired, it seemed, of talking to someone as responsive as a wall, and left. Leon took a deep breath in relief, leaning back against the wall again, briefly closing his eyes…

Then he remembered that the man had gone the same way as Saer.

"Let the kid go."

The red-head looked as if he found that statement amusing. He examined the little boy he was holding in the air, smiled wistfully at the child struggling in his arms, and looked back to the two in front of him.

"I'd rather not," he replied, staring down the two metal shapes that she held firmly in her hands. "After all, I don't think you find too many with his particular talents, anymore. Not after that nasty little boom."

Saer waited for a moment longer, her eyes narrowed, those items she held in her hands still, never taking her eyes off the Shifter.

"Let him go, and we won't kill you," the ugly creature beside her—a towering thing, that wolf—growled, his voice as dead as anything someone could imagine.

He laughed a little at that, shaking his head slowly as his expression shifted, flawless features dancing in his mirth. "Kill me?"

He closed his eyes, wondering if now was the time for the dream. The boy's dream. He spread his fingers across the boy's face, his palm breaking the human child's nose. He didn't pause as he reveled in the child's scream, lips parted and he exhaled. Yes, _this_ child in particular would be amusing… he liked the way he screamed.

"Show them, boy," she growled, drawing his hand back to examine the blood on it. "Help me show them what I can do. What I _have_ done."

Saer drew back a little as the blood suddenly began to multiply, falling from the Shifter's hand like a waterfall, as if there were some wound in his hand. But it was the boy's blood. Not his.

Whether or not the spectators knew this, he didn't care. The little girl behind them—the only other child awake—began to scream, her eyes wide with terror as she drew away from the river flowing straight towards them, curling closer towards the corner she had planted herself in.

He liked the way she screamed, too.

Saer, much as he predicted, didn't move an inch as the red tumbled towards her, lapping at her boots and the bottom of her trench coat. She merely pulled the trigger on both those things in her hands—the left one first, he noted just before two metallic objects hit his chest, the closest not even a centimeter away from the boy's nose.

She had impeccable aim, he thought as they shot out his back. But she wasn't aiming in the right place.

He continued the spell as if he hadn't noticed, listening and feeling the wound slowly close in around itself, watching as her eyes widened and she drew back.

"I missed you." The air passed over his lips, barely audible, as he had seen in the boy's dream, right before he started to sing.

The wolf-creature immediately collapsed, howling in pain as he clutched at his ears as if to stop the sound. A hideous sound, the Shifter thought distastefully, letting slip a little more of his power.

Saer, at first turned to see what had befallen her companion, suddenly found herself fighting off the blood as it churned about her, drawing higher and slapping at her like waves, drawing higher each time. It danced around her in a vicious whirlpool that eventually overcame her, and she was trapped within it.

The wolf had long ceased to be aware of what was happening to the blonde. The Shifter didn't care about him—he just didn't want any interference.

The song changed. The liquid-blood-egg churned about her, filling slowly with the crimson-black as the outermost part of the prison began to clot and solidify.

The Shifter was slowly, gradually losing his awareness of the world spinning around him. His own being was focused on the past, whirling through a thousand eternities of memories, the song flying through them in a twister of vocal maneuvers.

The chains he kept the magic on were about to break, the essence was pulling so fiercely.

Saer was now holding her breath, he knew. He could feel her try to twist within her prison, but the blood held her fast, the whole egg clotted about her. The outer shell was approaching a state so solid it would become impenetrable, he knew.

The dog was still lying on the ground, victim to the previous spell. The little girl was useless, cowering behind the animal's bulk, and the boy in his arms was sobbing with the pain as he was used for a vessel. The spell's vessel. _His_ vessel.

_Remember_… he thought as he released the chains.

He was completely lost to the churning world as the song wove itself, the craft he was using so wild and chaotic, full of its own erratic purpose. The boy might have been screaming for the agony he was experiencing, but the Shifter was no longer aware of anything but of what the magic and his own wild need willed him to do.

He could have drawn back then, if he wanted to. He could have pulled away easily enough. He had done so a million times before, and this could have easily been no exception.

But this time, he gleefully obeyed.

He no longer felt the weight of the boy in his arms, or even the beat of his own fabricated heart. He felt the flesh of a small child—but not that one. A little girl. He felt her fear as she pulled away, laughed once again as she resisted, striking out with a small piece of wood she'd found somewhere. He turned and saw a boy, tears streaming down his face as he screamed at the man to let his friend go. He thought once again, _He's next_, then turned and shoved the girl back onto the cold stone floor, and would not let her rise again.

The only sound he heard was not his own voice—it was the sound of a little girl screaming, remembered from thousands of years before.

Just one little girl among a countless number of broken children.

Leon became aware of the singing as he crouched over Onica's prone form, trying to still his hand long enough to see if she had a pulse. He was praying—something he never did—that she wasn't dead, that she was alright, when the singing started, and he remembered why he'd come.

Saer. He had to warn Saer.

If that man had killed Onica…

_The bastard._

He curled closer to her limp form, shivering against the heat his own body was experiencing. He might have been feverish, but the thought never occurred to him. He was lost and alone in a strange place, his best friend could be dead for all he knew, and he found himself, for the first time in an eternity, wanting to curl up in his mother's arms and cry.

But his foster-mother was a whore, and she had died that way. The only father he had known had shot her when she brought her last client into the house. The police were about to take him and his brothers to another home.

And then… the world ended. And he wound up here, tears streaming down his face and wishing vainly for what could have been and never would be.

But Saer was in trouble… she gave him water, helped him. He could rely on her, he knew. It was bizarre, but he needed something solid to latch onto while he was coping with the loss of his entire life, and somehow he felt like she was someone to trust. Something she seemed to stand for looked to be something he might learn to as well, if he understood what it was.

He'd come too late for Onica. He _would not_ come too late for Saer, as well.

He ignored the voice in his head that chided him, taunting with how weak he was and what little he could do. He was used to ignoring his darkest self, a habit he'd had as long as he could remember.

He stood, slowly, and took those extra steps to the doorway.

He saw the blood close about Saer and drew back immediately. For some bizarre reason, even though he'd seen an entire world blown to pieces with one bomb, an egg of blood seemed a strange thing.

He examined the room quickly, seeing a dead dog, children thrown haphazardly about the floor, and a man…

Leon's eyes widened.

The red-headed man from before was holding a screaming Aidan. His younger brother. _Eight years old, and he had to see that destruction_… And yet, he still survived.

The egg was in his way. There was no possible way to get through that door without going through the solidifying… blood clot.

But… What could _he_ do once he was in there?

The answer seemed clear the moment he thought the question; free Saer. She would help him.

Bringing the metal stick about, he took a deep breath before ramming it into the egg with all his strength. The shell caved in, hardened so fast, and the blunt end of the stick collided with something far more solid embedded within the shell. He forced the staff—because that sounded _so_ much better than stick—up, cracking the brittle shell and watching in disgust as clotted blood piled out of the enormous gap he had created.

Saer fell out, crawled as fast as she could away from the egg, shaking visibly and coughing wildly, trying to breathe far too quickly and too much.

Leon knelt beside her, reaching out to calm her, helping her out of the rapidly crumbling blood-egg. She immediately pulled closer to him, and Leon saw in her eyes a haunted and frightened look he hadn't seen when she helped him.

_What happened…?_

The question was forming in his eyes, he knew, because her face hardened and she pulled away, fiercely, almost roughly.

He looked up and saw the red-headed man towering over them, enraged as he glared down at the figure of a wide-eyed Leon, Aidan no longer in his grasp.

_Soa, what the hell just happened…?_

Saer wasn't sure. She couldn't have been, and knew it had happened too fast for possible or any recent comprehension.

**_Don't worry about it. He's just trying to scare you._**

The Dragon's image flashed before her eyes, wrapped protectively around an image of herself. She hadn't felt her… She's been scared… She had thought Saer was gone, for a moment.

There was a warmth nearby, and she clung to it momentarily, readying herself for a breath in time, feeling the solidity and presence of a _real_ human being—not some fiction woven by a freak with blood magic, or the sudden clamor of the two voices in her mind trying desperately to reassure her. She looked up, her vision slowly returning, and saw the concerned face of Leon looking down at her.

She drew away roughly, thinking momentarily of a muffled thanks but knew he wouldn't understand. She nodded to him, then caught the look in his eyes as his gaze ventured up.

She rolled away immediately, pulling the metal canister off her belt and feeling the sword form. She was enraged at the man—but even as his figure shifted and he became a lizard-like creature that pounced at Leon, who rolled away, she was strangely calm. All she wanted to do was kill him. Nothing mattered but that.

It was as if this were something she had been working towards her whole life.

She drove the blade through his chest, then pulled it out, backflipping away from the slow swing of a reptilian arm. Recovering quickly, she narrowed her eyes as she watched the torn skin men itself, as if nothing would phase it.

_A shape-shifting regen…_ she thought, ducking under a testing jab with an arm that was changing, becoming like a heavy harpoon from days long past; when there were still things to hunt in the sea.

**_You have to get him to fight you in his original form._**

All she had to do was show him power, the Dragon insisted. Show her own.

Saer calmed the rapid beating of her heart with practiced ease, dodging what was beginning to look like a heavy medieval bludgeon on the end of his tail. _Not yet,_ she hissed inwardly, feeling the white scar on her cheek start to throb. _Not while the kid's around. He's seen enough already._

He was hardly a civilian. That was the only limitation…

_I'm not using it, and that's final._

The Dragon didn't reply.

The creature, his form constantly shifting, as if he couldn't keep his mind in one place, leaped for her, now more like a panther in build, protected by a hide that was rapidly molding into something metallic. She rolled underneath, only to find that she couldn't stand. He'd changed the tail of the creature into a net, which was gathering her within.

The metal staff she'd given Leon was thrust through one of the rungs and she grabbed hold, using her free hand to swing her own weapon at the still-changing snare about her. Hot and pliable, it was easily sliced through by her weapon. Once free, she backed Leon up a bit, fully aware that they were being driven somewhere by this creature. And she didn't like it one bit.

Unfortunately, standing their ground was virtually impossible. They were overwhelmed, and she knew that Leon wasn't going to last long regardless. He looked dizzy, confused, and his own reaction time was slowing drastically. His eyes looked feverish, and he was sweating uncontrollably.

The ship's engines suddenly started up.

Wide-eyed, Saer stumbled to duck underneath the arms of some kraken-imitation, then grabbed Leon's arm and started pulling him with her as she ran back down the ship's hallways. Hearing the wild roar of glee as the thing followed in pursuit, Saer pressed harder, half-dragging the unfortunate boy behind her.

She could _not_ have that… _thing_ at the base. It would kill everything there.

The pursuing creature was barely through the passageway separating ship from docking bay before the seals slammed into place, Saer and Leon mere paces ahead of it.

It could have easily caught up with them at any moment. It was merely _toying_ with them, a fact Saer had to grit her teeth against and force herself to keep running. An opportunity would arise—she just needed to be patient.

She was almost carrying a half-conscious Leon when it came.

This hallway was a tight squeeze for the large shape the shape-shifter had become, and he was forced to downsize himself a bit. There was an emergency seal, built to section off the building in extreme cases. It was a function accessed by fires, floods, a control panel somewhere in the main office, explosions, and her own personal favorite.

Her guns were barely out and at the ready by the time she needed them to shoot—and the small panel sitting off to the side of the doorway was blasted into smithereens, causing the seal to slide down from the ceiling too fast for the creature's current state to avoid, and she immediately dashed off again down the hallway, lest an error in her impulsive plan present itself.

She was around the corner a breath before tears began to stream down the creature's face, and was too far away to feel the heat when the remains burst into flame, leaving nothing but the tears and ash.

* * *

Because every death scene is more fun when something burns. Even spontaneously, just like that. --;; THERE'S A REASON TO MY MADNESS, PEOPLE.

::sniffles:: GOD, that was hard. Blah. ::pokes DemonGod:: Maybe you'll stop complaining about nobody updating. XD!

… What do I do at the end of these? ::thinks for a minute:: ...

Crickets: ::stare blankly::

REVIEWS! Right… ::grins sheepishly::

Fifi: … NO WORSHIPPING, DAMNIT. ::stops:: … Wait. I'm going to be killed for the end of this chapter, aren't I?

DG86: … Is that a good thing? Probably not. Blah.

Shade: Yesh, I hate the freaking-ass cubes, too. That's why I put it in there. XD! Nehehe.

… ::eyes the spell check button nervously:: … It's not REALLY necessary, is it? You guys don't mind grammar oopsies? Do you? ::looks around pleadingly:: … ::gets no sympathy:: … Blah. ::trudges off to edit::

(Sixteen pages. --;; Woot… waves a banner)  
(... Are all my little... face things supposed to dissappear like that? Stupid FF.net. Ask me at summonerchild88hotmail.com and I'll give you the URL. It works nicer. Fucking technical errors...)


	5. On the Long and Lonesome Highway

The Legend Within  
by shike77  
Chapter V  
"On **the long and lonesome highway**..."

_- 'Turn the Page' by Metallica_

Mn, long time no update? The usual excuses, I suppose. Saer's been acting up lately; Leon's just a pain in the ass regardless, so whatever.

Started High School this year; that's grade ten here. Crazy people. I'm in a self-directed school; but right now I'm in a bit of a rush for units to be done. Need to see that fracking Religion seminar. Blarrrggg.

Social would be nice to do right now, but we can only have three fricking things out at a time. WTF.

If there's any blaring errors in this update, ignore them. I'm too lazy to remember whether or not I've edited this. I'm throwing a spell-check at it and posting it. Suck it up.

... Where am I going with this? Hell if I know.

* * *

Eventually, Saer did slow to a stop, blinking rapidly as if to dull the ache in her eyes. She' adorned Leon with her helmet, knowing full well that Cehkan's would never fit either of them, and opting to save his life if she dropped his unconscious form by accident. This forced her to squint in order to keep as much dust out of her eyes as she could, and her own inability to breathe unaided at the speeds she liked to drive kept her moving at a rather slow pace. With a small bit of resignation stretched across her features, she switched the bike into hover mode, glancing about uneasily at the scenery. They'd made better time than she had thought, but not as much as she would have hoped.

They were in the outskirts of Deningrad—the towering buildings around them that dominated nearly every stable or unstable surface on the planet were indifferent from any other city, but the place itself was legendary for the homes of its wealthy, who were comfortably nestled in wherever the space was available for their three-floored homes. It didn't matter that there was no room for anyone else, so that family sizes were limited and apartments were too small; there was always the wealthy. They disgusted Saer to no end (that most of them worked for the company and the government notwithstanding), and she often vowed that she'd boot the lot of them out of their homes and welcome the working class into their homes to tear the places apart.

Of course, she'd do that when she had the time and need. Right now, she was a member of the Air Faction, and that came before any personal desire to sack homes of the bourgeoisie.

Then again, they kept one of those homes for their own devices, as well. But for people who deserved the peace of privacy—that, and the space was needed.

It sparked an idea, seeing the barred entrance to the district. Not one she approved of, but under the circumstances, she had no choice. Nothing else had presented itself, and she knew that carrying a feverish Leon for much longer was going to prove tiresome. She wished her com wasn't out; that she'd brought along a replacement.

She wanted to leave the kid behind. She had little obligation to him—but there was a _slight_ chance he knew something of value, and that alone kept her from dropping him on the street to die.

Well, that and regulation. She supposed he might have counted as a rescued victim to the company in this matter—and, as much as he couldn't communicate with anyone, leaving him to the streets might cause an uproar.

_The citizens can never know,_ she thought bitterly. _They just have to be miserable and not know why no one in the government tries to make things better._

"My life," she muttered, kicking the bike back into gear, "sucks."

Bypassing security was nothing major. Her bike, like the citizens' various transportation devices, had the codes installed on it—Soa forbid anyone who lived there actually take the time to memorize a string of numbers—and there were no guards. Even if there had been, a customized hover-bike wasn't all that hard to imagine in this district, but both her and Leon's battered and bloodied conditions might have called for knocking a few people out. Not worth the effort to kill them and cover up their deaths, and she'd be discovered for sure.

She drove aimlessly for a few blocks, backtracking several times , swerving off to the side once or twice to make it look like she'd escaped from a brawl the rich little brats were so fond of getting into.

She eventually stopped at a gate in front of the house she wanted—a building only slightly smaller than those around it, but with a larger property, higher walls, and far more advanced security. The gardens in front were attended to well enough by robotic arms, but if one were to peer through the gate they'd see a brilliant expanse of lush, healthy plants and varying ornaments, fountains, and the like. Not much was in view, for the wall was steel, but the windows in the home were all carefully guarded against peering eyes.

A panel opened in the wall beside the gate, and a camera slid out. Upon spotting her position on the bike, several more devices emerged from the wall, carefully examining every bit of her possible.

"You're not welcome, _Zeyl_." The words were spat, the tone deep and flow a bit sluggish. The communication equipment revealed little more about the speaker than his odd, unplaceable accent.

She brushed tangled hair out of her eyes, which were narrowed fiercely at the tiny cameras. "I don't like this any better than you, but I don't have a choice."

"We're not-" there was a sound like a suction cup, quick and disturbing, "-going back. We agreed."

She would have growled. "I'm not _taking_ you back. I need a place to lay low."

"You have your—ways."

Her hand was itching for her sword. Knowing that any touch to her weapons would do little to aid her, she merely bit her tongue for a moment.

"Not with the kid."

Cameras whirled, examining the unconscious Leon strapped behind her. He was leaning on her back, eyelids flickering in a feverish way.

"... He work for you?"

_Nobody works _for_ me, asshole._

"No," she muttered, absently, knowing that if she weren't wearing gloves, her knuckles would have shown white for how fiercely she was gripping the handlebars.

"Take him to a hospital, then. We have no place for—strays."

She grit her teeth against the retort she wanted to snarl back at him, forcing herself to take a deep breath and deal with the man accordingly.

"I can't do that," she replied, barely holding back a snarl. "_They're_ after him."

It was the truth, she supposed, if only half so—she felt no remorse for using one of the few things they hated more than her to gain entry.

There was a pause, and there was a small bit of conversing in low voices. She recognized the new voice immediately, and resisted the urge to turn around and find somewhere else to stay. Biting her tongue, she didn't smirk in triumph as the gate opened—merely switched modes and ventured through.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The hum of machinery was always in the background, but it seemed to rise to a deafening roar that surpassed greatly its normal state as white noise. Jheil felt it as a massive throb against his skull as he leaned over yet another project, hurriedly throwing parts together to see what would happen. He often could be found, burrowed deep within the chaos that was Air Faction's lab, finding comfort and ease among the half-finished, towering piles of technology and the various enemy units he was examining at any given point in time.

He threw the pieces of scrap metal down in disgust and buried his face in his hands. The large nose made this hard, of course, and only furthered his frustration.

Soa. The woman had finally managed to get herself killed.

It had to happen eventually—he'd known how little value she held her own life in for as long as he'd known her. He'd thought, once, that perhaps he could convince her to think better of herself, once. But, he soon learned that she held little regard for anything of that sort, in spite of the woman she was becoming. She was too strong to give in to anything.

That was alright. He'd grown out of it.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck."

He felt rather useless. Sensors and coms had suddenly gone offline the moment Saer went off to aid Cehkan, disturbed by something. They all worked now—they had been in perfect operating condition about an hour before the wolf-man woke.

Now the Factions' leader was stalking through the halls, snapping at anything that came near. As a result, the hallways were very empty. No one liked dealing with him when he was angry—and Jheil certainly wasn't about to try.

In spite of Cehkan's rage, Githen had somehow managed to find his way through the halls unfazed by the man's wrath. His goggles were sitting on his forehead, their twin screens blank and lifeless without being connected to anything. He stood on his toes, peering over the pile of junk that had collected on Jheil's desk.

No one had broken the news to the kid. They didn't know how.

"What'cha doin'?"

Without waiting for an answer, the little boy started sorting through the assorted material, fitting pieces together in a joining that seemed about to teeter and fall at any moment.

Jheil sighed, absently sketching at one of the designs in his electronic journal. "Nothing..."

Githen blew hair out of his round face and grinned. "Okay. 'Cause Saer wanted you to run a diaggy on her bike when you're not busy."

Jheil looked up at Githen, astonishment written across his face. "_What_?"

"Saer wanted you to look at her bike. She says the com's broken." The kid scowled, then, at the lack of a reply from the man, and added, "Yaknow, Sa's always telling me it's rude to stare... And your breath stinks."

Forcing closed the mouth that had just hit the table beneath him, he stammered, "H-how did you—where is she?"

Githen shrugged. "Never seen the place. But there's a whole bunch of people in the background. And she was mad at them, too. Something about someone I couldn't see."

Jheil scrambled to his taloned feet wildly, the sharp claws scraping the metal floor beneath them with a sickening sound. Ignoring that, he demanded, "Can you bring her up again?"

The raven-haired boy nodded and grabbed his arm. "C'mon!"

Saer leaned back in her chair, smirking at the bemused expressions on Cehkan and Jheil's faces. Yes, it was all-too-worth it. Feeling a little insulted after the bird-man admitted that they'd thought her dead, she jested sarcastically with them for a moment or two before deciding to let them try to explain what was going on in her absence. They stammered a bit over each other—until Githen finally came through with childish logic and explained it all.

"The girl you found is still sleeping, there's some really funky cargo on board, and I think Cehkky's got fleas again."

"Do not," the wolf-man growled, ears flat against his skull. He shook his head and fixed a snickering Githen with an 'I'll get you later' glare before looking back at the screen with, "So, what's your story?"

She glanced back at those behind her and hissed, "Later. Not now."

As much as the company had given their word long ago not to divulge any secrets that would royally wind the Factions in trouble—that, and had chips planted in their brains to prevent them from doing so—she trusted these people little. Amongst them, she wasn't safe.

"Hey, Zeyl, your boyfriend's got a bad dream!"

A collective 'aww' rose from the assembled, and Saer swore loudly—Githen had heard it all before, anyway—as she scrambled to her feet, darting across the room while ignoring questions raised from the rest of her team. She shoved people aside, growling obscenities at their jeers, resisting the strong urge to break more than one jaw, and fixing anyone who tried to meet her gaze with deadly glares only she could muster. She slipped through the open doorway, shoved out anyone in the small chamber, shut the door and jammed it so no one would enter.

Brushing aside her hair, she paused to examine Leon. He was, as predicted, tossing and turning, sweating and moaning, in the throes of some feverish dream. She rubbed her temples, then sat down on the bed adjacent to his own. There really wasn't much she could do.

She flipped on the loudspeaker. "Can someone fetch me Alyse?"

There were a few grumbled retorts before a reply came, crisp and clear, "I'm here, Saer."

The Air Faction member breathed a sigh of relief, then opened the door to let the woman in.

Woman was hardly a term most would use to describe her. Her hooves clip-clopped on the ceramic tiles in the hallway, then became deadened thuds on the carpet in the room. Pale hair was kept in a tight bun at the base of her neck, and as she was human from torso-up, she gave the display of someone who lived out in the fresh air. The rest of her—four round hooves and a tail—gave her the look of a centaur. The long ears of a horse twitched back and forth briefly, and she sniffed the air lightly as she briefly glanced at Leon.

"... Well, he reeks of fever," she replied, sounding almost sad. "But... He doesn't smell... Normal, either."

She shrugged, and knelt down in the narrow space between the two beds with some difficulty. Saer glanced briefly down at the pale silver tattoo of a sphere on her left hind leg, then turned her attention back to the kid.

"He's not from... around here."

Alyse didn't reply. She pulled a chain over her head, where most of it had hidden under her shirt, then held the small orb that was the sole accessory in the palm of her hand. It began to glow in response, its light filling the room with a comforting warmth Saer knew all to well. Saer watched idly as the wound on Leon's head healed over, bathed in the magic shimmering around him. He stopped tossing about, and the rise and fall of his chest resumed a normal pace.

The centaur glanced over to Saer and smiled. "You know, he reminds me of home."

Saer raised an eyebrow and asked, "How so?"

Alyse only smiled in that knowing way and replied, "He smells clean."

She left the conversation at that, slipped the chain back over her neck, tucked the orb underneath her shirt, and walked out of the room.

Saer reflected on that for a moment. Wasn't she born in Serdio? But... Serdio wasn't clean in the least. True, it had Seles National Park (the only place on Endiness that had trees left in it), but the rest of the country was just as polluted as the rest of the world.

She rolled her eyes and left the room, heading back to the console she'd been speaking with Cehkan, Jheil and Githen on.

"Anyway..."

When Leon woke, he'd almost expected a ruler rapped on his head, a brightly-lit classroom, and jeers from about thirty kids in the area.

What he got was darkness, interrupted by a few blinking lights, and the whir of machinery in the background.

He blinked, and slowly moved to rub the sleep from his eyes. Odd. He'd almost expected... to be completely unable to move. A headache the size of the sun. Like every person woke up with after... slipping out of consciousness (because that sounded so much better than 'fainting'). But, he didn't have anything. In fact, he was quite capable of swinging his legs over the side of the bed—looked like something off of Star Trek—and feeling the carpet with bare feet. He was even completely able to stand, oddly enough. Hell, he could even make out the soft gleam of blonde hair on the bed adjacent to his own.

He decided against investigating any sort of identity, figuring it was most likely Saer, by the length of the hair—her hair was long, right? He hadn't really taken much of a look at it... he'd still been a bit woozy.

And now he was magically fine. Just like that.

He wandered around until he found the door—which opened on its own. It would have been a prompt source of entertainment if Kiedyn were there, he thought with a wry half-smile, and suddenly found himself fighting off a bout of homesickness. Not good...

He was pondering exactly where he was and what had happened to him when he emerged from the hallway and into a room with... tables? His feet were cold on the steel floor, and he suddenly remembered that he had no clue where his beat-up old runners were.

He sighed, sitting down on one of the chairs and leaning his elbows on the table. On touch, he activated several buttons barely the size of his fingertips. Those lit up, and he jumped three feet out of his seat before the table was full of dishes covered in full-course meals. Some, he could recognize (turkey, steak, oatmeal, even chocolate-chip cookies) and others he couldn't dream existed. Something purple and red... this thing oozing something green that stunk... And that one looked like sushi, but he'd never had the stuff before so he wouldn't know...

He was given only a moment to stare and ponder over the display in front of him before his stomach snarled loudly, demanding sustenance. He grinned sheepishly, although no one was around, and tentatively poked the steak.

After a few bites, he dug in. He was hungry, anyway.

After devouring three full-course meals (more than he'd ever eaten in his life), he grabbed a bowl of what looked like fruit salad and took it with him as he left the room, stuffing as much as he could at any point in time into his mouth as he wandered through the halls.

He eventually came upon an empty room, lined with panels that glowed softly in when he was near them. He absently walked its edges for a minute or two until he found something he swore was a picture of a guitar. He placed the bowl on the floor, up against the panels, and gingerly touched the picture.

In the middle of the room, an electric bass and stand appeared out of nowhere.

Much staring ensued.

_What the hell is this, Earth 2020? Or am I on the fucking USS Voyager? Maybe the Death Star...? Hey, maybe I'm undergoing a classic Final Fantasy memory-esque... thing?_

He shook that off and absently—cautiously—made his way over to the guitar. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he poked it—and immediately pulled his hand away once he touched it. It took him a few more pokes, just to make sure it was the real deal, before he picked it up.

It was lighter than he was used to, and a bit smaller. He'd live.

He slung the strap over his shoulder and absently placed his fingers. He strummed the chord, and was mildly surprised when he found he had to tune the guitar—how silly of him to think that, for all the technology he'd run into, the guitar would materialize perfectly tuned. He slapped his pockets for his tuner half-heartedly; he knew it wouldn't be there. It was in his guitar case. Wherever the hell _that_ was, now. So he was left with his ears; that didn't bother him too much, either. Normally he was fine without one, anyway.

It took him a few seconds—_damn_ that thing was terrible—to get the thing sounding normal enough for him. It wasn't _his_ bass, but it would do for now.

Saer was a restless sleeper; the slightest movement or noise out of the ordinary, and she was wide awake with a knife at your throat.

She was aware of Leon leaving the room. Decided to let him be for a time. What's the worst that could happen, anyway? Maybe he'd find food, or something. Wasn't her job to baby-sit him.

After she found that she couldn't sleep anyway—every time she closed her eyes, the vision that damned red-headed freak had shown her popped up rather unexpectedly—she swung her feet off the bed and into her warm boots. It wasn't normal to wear shoes indoors, but Saer had low tolerance to chill, and her feet would be cold on the steel floor of the hallways. Never mind that she was probably still tracking mud around.

He's discovered the food replicators, she noticed, and probably by accident. She pressed the 'return' button, and all the dishes and various crumbs or bits of food left behind were taken back into the machine. After replicating a quick glass of hot—_very_ hot—chocolate, she absently strolled along the corridors, following the faint sound that was tickling her ears. Music? It was pretty good, she mused. Although a bit slow, and perhaps out of practice.

Leon had, unwittingly, found the holo-room, and was now jamming on a guitar—one of those new inventions from a couple of years back that were rapidly increasing their popularity...

She paused at that thought as she leaned against the doorway. How would he know how to play one of those things? She knew it was a proven impossibility to just pick up a musical instrument and know how to play it immediately. Real life wasn't _that_ cliché. Or nice.

Her train of thought broke once Leon saw her and stopped playing, a sheepish look on his face as he hastily put the guitar on its stand. She raised her eyebrow at him, smirked, then spun on her heel and walked out the door. _Kids these days,_ she thought wryly, swigging back the last of her now-luke-warm drink.

* * *

Hm, one review? You lazy asshats. Meh. ::needs her sleep::

So, Fifi—NO MORE WORSHIPPING. Not allowed. Meaniiee.


End file.
